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Ross Douthat

By Ross Douthat

Opinion Columnist

A scene from the first week of the second Trump administration: After the president held a White House event announcing a shared venture, with up to $500 billion of funding, among OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank to build a vast new data center for the artificial intelligence future, Elon Musk sniped on X that the money for the venture wasn’t really there.

Asked if his billionaire ally’s snarking bothered him, the president shrugged it off: “No, it doesn’t. He hates one of the people in the deal.” This was reference to Musk’s conflicts with Sam Altman, the quietly polarizing head of OpenAI. And, President Trump added, “I have certain hatreds of people too.”

It was an illuminating moment, not just an amusing line. Every new administration has factions that end up hating one another despite being on the same official team. But the second Trump White House is starting out with a remarkable degree of open conflict among different individuals, constituencies and worldviews.

This is not, however, a sign of Trump’s weakness. In his first term many people around him were just trying to drape some semblance of Washingtonian normalcy over presidential incapacity. The second time is different: Trump has set himself up as a king with a court where the main litmus test is personal loyalty, and so there are incentives for any people who wants anything in America (except, yes, more undocumented immigration or........

© The New York Times