The extremely public and increasingly unhinged breakup of Elon Musk and President Donald Trump has caused chaos in DC, forced Silicon Valley executives to pick sides, and wiped more than $150 billion off Tesla’s market cap.
But in the conspiracy-theory-addicted corners of the internet, the feud between Musk and Trump is nothing more than a fake, planned distraction. After Musk posted on X about Trump’s alleged relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the multimillionaire charged with sex trafficking of minors—“@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files,” Musk wrote. “That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”—conspiracy theorists were convinced this was all a plan to trick Democrats into calling for the Epstein files to be published.
Rather than admit that two of their favorite people have fallen out and are making increasingly dire threats against each other, QAnon folks prefer to believe that this is all part of a scheme cooked up by the pair in recent months.
“Smooth-brained folks who haven’t been paying attention and don’t understand that kayfabe is in play, actually believe Trump and Musk are fighting,” AwakenedOutlaw, an anonymous X account that promotes far-right talking points with over 300,000 followers, wrote on Thursday evening. Kayfabe is a decades-old term used in the world of pro wrestling to describe how wrestlers maintain the illusion that fights are real and that their hatred of their opponents extends outside the ring.
For the influencers and grifters dedicated to the QAnon conspiracy world, kayfabe has become a crucial tool to maintain a veil of credibility when reality seems to jar with conspiracy theories. By claiming that events that don’t fit their predictions are fake, influencers in the community can ensure that their followers stay dedicated to the movement.
And on Thursday evening, within minutes of the Trump-Musk feud kicking off, influencers very quickly began calling it all fake or part of a game of “5D chess.”
“It’s a wonderful game of 5D chess! Get the popcorn out, and watch the left go wild,” wrote one member of the Telegram channel run by prominent election denier David Clements.
Liz Crokin, a Pizzagate conspiracy theorist who met Trump in Mar-a-Lago in 2022, pushed the conspiracy theory even further. In a post on X that has been viewed 440,000 times, she claims that “it would not surprise me if the Deep State created fake evidence falsely implicating Trump. If this is the case, their scheme will fail and backfire. So grab your popcorn and watch the media and Democrats falsely report Trump is a pedophile and a sex trafficker—this boomerang will be epic! 5D chess at its finest, baby—checkmate!”
While Musk is mentioned in a couple of Q drops—the anonymous posts on fringe message boards that followers believe were written by government insiders—he was not a major figure within the movement until last year. Thanks to his role in Trump’s reelection and his decision to allow all QAnon accounts back onto X, Musk is highly lauded within the community. The centibillionaire even posted a video with QAnon references to his 200 million X followers on the eve of the 2024 election.
A prominent QAnon promoter who goes by MJ Truth suggested that this spat was dreamt up prior to Trump’s inauguration, when Musk was spending significant time at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
“Elon Musk basically lived at Mar-A-Lago for a few months,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. “Lots of time to plan things out. As much as they are trying to sell this argument to everyone that this is real, it isn’t. Only anons understand why … It’s KAYFAB [sic] on a MAGAnamonous level.”
When Politico reported late Thursday about a potential detente between Musk and Trump, MJ Truth wrote on Telegram: “Told ya, Kayfabe.”
A similar situation occurred in 2018 when former attorney general Jeff Session was attacked and then fired by Trump during his first term. Because someone who claimed they were “Q” and created the QAnon movement had previously writte, “TRUST SESSIONS,” influencers quickly said Trump’s attacks were fake and just part of his ongoing battle to expose the deep state.
Outside of QAnon, conspiracy theorists were struggling to come to terms with MAGA’s biggest figures having such a public falling out. “This World stands on the brink of Total Destruction,” Alex Jones, the conspiracist who called the Sandy Hook school shootings a hoax and was sued for defamation and found liable by default, wrote on X, adding that he would need to investigate the allegations about Trump and the Epstein files further before picking a side.
Meanwhile, Jack Posobiec, a prominent Pizzagate promoter who recently traveled to Ukraine as a member of the press with a Trump cabinet member, put the whole thing down to men being men.
“Some of y’all can’t handle 2 high agency males going at it and it really shows,” Posobiec wrote on X. “This is direct communication (phallocentric) vs indirect communication (gynocentric).”
In some comments, people didn’t seem to really understand what this all meant.
“What is this being used as a distraction from??” one user wrote on Telegram, while another suggested: “Elon most likely wrote it anyway.” A third added: “I wonder if that leads more into the auto pen and Biden doubles?”
Finally, someone else just said what everyone else was clearly thinking: “I’m so confused.”