Elon Musk vs. JD Vance: The MAGA Movement’s Internal War
The war for America’s future isn’t between Republicans and Democrats—it’s inside the GOP itself.
Describing Donald Trump’s first six weeks in office as chaotic would be a significant understatement. During his first term, his administration was a wild ride, but thanks to many neoconservatives throwing their careers away to keep things restrained, it was somewhat manageable. Additionally, the chaos of Russiagate was out of Trump’s control but certainly contributed to the volatility of his presidency.
This time around, there are no neoconservatives to restrain Trump. Well, there is Little Marco Rubio, but he still appears shocked by how little control he has—fighting with Elon Musk and powerlessly watching in horror at the disastrous Zelensky-Trump press conference.
During his four-year break, Trump has assembled a team of loyalists—a stark contrast to the “sacrifice yourself to push the neoconservative agenda” dynamic that defined his first term. Unfortunately, Trump himself did not properly vet the two dominant ideological factions within the MAGA movement, leading to friction between competing visions. The result is an administration that feels incredibly unstable as these warring factions battle for America’s future.
The War Within MAGA Reflects America’s Larger Struggle: Progress vs. Culture
The progress ideology centers on economic gain and power, assuming that while today is good, tomorrow should be significantly better. History supports this perspective, as humanity has benefited immensely from technological progress over the past few centuries. Rising life expectancy worldwide is an easy way to see this in action. Given such success, it makes sense to aggressively pursue innovation.
Or does it? Is longevity truly the ultimate goal of life?
The World Happiness Report, which synthesizes data from multiple well-respected organizations, does not align perfectly with technological progress or wealth. Wealthier nations tend to score higher, but the United States ranks only 23rd despite being the most powerful country in the world.
Finland, Sweden, and other countries that better distribute wealth, offer social benefits, and share strong cultural bonds rank highly. Economic powerhouses like the U.S. (23), Germany (24), France (27), China (60), Russia (72), and India (126) all perform poorly by comparison. Japan (51) and South Korea (52), which fully embraced the pro-progress agenda with their intense work and education cultures, have abysmally low happiness rankings. Ultimately, what use is a life of luxury and longevity if people aren’t happy?
This battle between progress and culture is dividing American politics. Among Democrats, progress has won out, relegating figures like Bernie Sanders and AOC to town halls and tweets. While there is legitimate criticism that pro-progress Democrats are not advancing progress effectively due to excessive regulation—such as California’s struggles to build anything—the party remains committed to innovation over cultural preservation.
Unlike the Democrats, the MAGA movement has not fully picked a side, which is why everything feels so chaotic. If Elon Musk is the Trump administration’s champion of progress, JD Vance is the champion of culture. As both sides clash over America’s future, one thing is certain: Trump’s second term will be tumultuous.
Unity: Ending Foreign Wars
One area where both factions agree is the need to end America’s international wars.
For the pro-progress camp, war is disruptive. With the advent of nuclear weapons, war is no longer a driver of innovation, as nuclear annihilation would set progress back immensely. The fall of the Roman Empire and the subsequent Dark Ages serve as a historical warning that progress is never guaranteed.
For the pro-culture camp, war is an expensive distraction. Instead of investing in domestic issues, the government spends trillions abroad. While existential conflicts like World War II were necessary, most recent interventions—Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Kosovo, and Kuwait—have yielded little benefit for the U.S. Even if these wars targeted immoral regimes, time spent abroad is time not spent fixing America’s problems.
This is why there is broad unity on ending U.S. involvement in Ukraine. Israel-Gaza is more complicated, with Trump’s imperialist tendencies occasionally overriding those around him. However, even here, Trump has managed to push for a ceasefire far more effectively than Joe Biden—a fact that deserves acknowledgment.
Beyond foreign wars, however, the ideological divisions become more apparent. The role of government, immigration, and economic policy will continue to divide the Trump administration in the years ahead.
Pro-Progress
On December 26, 2024, Vivek Ramaswamy released a full-blown pro-progress manifesto that encapsulates the mindset that he and Elon Musk represent. At the time, a heated debate was unfolding over H-1B visas—whether they were genuinely attracting top talent or simply suppressing American wages.
In his manifesto, Ramaswamy passionately defends the H-1B visa program, arguing that American culture has become too complacent and mediocrity is now celebrated over excellence. He criticizes how physical appearance is glorified over intelligence. He laments the lack of cultural reinforcement for ambition, arguing that America needs more films like Whiplash—a brutal psychological drama about a jazz drummer who prioritizes perfection over personal well-being. He suggests that America must move away from an obsession with leisure and embrace a mindset of achievement.
His manifesto went viral on X.com, amassing over 121.2 million views. However, the backlash from pro-culture MAGA supporters was swift, likely contributing to his exclusion from joining Musk in running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Nonetheless, Ramaswamy remains a significant political force as he now prepares to run for Governor of Ohio in 2026.
Meanwhile, Musk continues to wield significant influence within Trump’s government, aggressively advancing the pro-progress agenda. His cost-cutting initiatives have thus far yielded minimal savings relative to the overall government deficit, but his more consequential actions lie elsewhere—namely, in dismantling regulatory agencies.
While critics focus on the gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—an essential post-2008 regulatory body designed to keep financial firms in check—this is merely a piece of the larger picture. Musk’s sweeping purge of regulatory institutions, intentionally carried out in a reckless manner, has severely weakened the government’s ability to enforce its own laws. This has created an environment where Musk and other ambitious entrepreneurs can push innovation at an accelerated pace, forcing regulators into a reactive position.
In theory, this approach acts as an innovation accelerant. The philosophy behind it assumes that government oversight hinders progress rather than facilitating it—a viewpoint clearly reflected in the Trump administration’s opposition to the CHIPs Act. Instead of subsidizing domestic semiconductor production, the administration has treated government intervention as a liability. That is, of course, unless it directly benefits Musk—who is currently maneuvering to seize a billion-dollar government contract from Verizon while also trying to secure millions of dollars in State Department purchases for his “Armored Teslas.”
Despite these contradictions, the pro-progress agenda remains focused on dismantling government oversight to create an unrestrained environment for technological and economic acceleration. Six weeks into Trump’s second term, it’s evident that this faction holds the upper hand, shaping the administration’s trajectory in profound and controversial ways.
Pro-Culture: JD Vance’s Alternative Vision
While Musk’s pro-progress agenda takes center stage, a quieter revolution is taking place within the Trump administration. When Trump was selecting his vice president, three names floated to the top: the experienced Marco Rubio, the wealthy North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, and the millennial MAGA senator JD Vance. The first two represented establishment continuity, while Vance embodied a meaningful pivot away from traditional Republican orthodoxy. Thanks largely to the intervention of Don Jr., Vance secured the nomination, marking a shift in the ideological balance of power within the administration.
Vance as the Face of the Forgotten American
JD Vance epitomizes the American Dream. His memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, chronicles his rise from the struggling towns of Appalachia to Yale Law School. Unlike elites born into privilege, Vance’s ascent resonates with the working-class Americans who feel abandoned by both parties. His authenticity as a self-made man has positioned him as a champion of the forgotten American—a role he continues to embrace within the administration.
However, political ascension requires compromise, and understanding Vance’s true ideology is complicated. Unlike Musk, who remains a businessman wielding political power temporarily, Vance is a career politician in the making. As such, his positions may sometimes reflect political necessity rather than personal conviction.
The best way to grasp Vance’s ideological core is through his pre-Senate interviews, particularly those from his Hillbilly Elegy book tour. In a 2017 discussion with Ezra Klein at Vox, Vance tackled the complexities of American disadvantage:
“The problem, as I see it, is that we haven’t necessarily developed a great vocabulary to describe disadvantage in a newer, much more culturally diverse country.
One of the things I hope that a reader of my book will take away is that it really operates among multiple different axes. It’s a function of where you grew up, whether you grew up in concentrated poverty, your race, your class, the education level of your parents, how much childhood trauma you faced, and whether your parents were single or still married.
I really think we have to catch our collective vocabulary up to the real complexity of these problems, because if we don’t, we’re left effectively talking about the issue in incredibly reductive ways that aren’t helpful. It’s not just that talking to that kid about white privilege is not an especially useful way to understand his real disadvantage. It actually makes it harder for him to see the disadvantages that other people face.”
By 2025, Vance was proven right in his skepticism of identity-based rhetoric. The wealth gap in America continued to widen, and the last major civil rights achievement—Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015—is nearly a decade old. His critique that America’s discourse was lacking, unable to articulate and address the real problems, has been proven correct.
A Challenge to Both Left and Right Orthodoxy
Vance has also challenged both technocrats and libertarian conservatives for failing to address America’s deeper social ills:
“I think a lot about why we’re so bad at talking about non-economic problems. Our public discourse is really dominated by what I’ll call the technocratic left and the libertarian right. We want to see these problems purely in terms of rational actors responding to incentives.
If you’re not talking about social and cultural capital, the role of religion, childhood trauma, and family instability, you’re missing key drivers of economic and social mobility. If you look at a study like Raj Chetty’s, for example, you can make a very good argument that the two most important factors in mobility differences are social capital and family breakdown.”
As America faces mounting debt, declining birth rates, and eroding social cohesion, Vance’s vision of restoring community bonds is gaining traction. His rhetoric about rebuilding American institutions and emphasizing family stability appeals to those disillusioned with both corporate globalism and performative activism.
The Trump Alliance: Pragmatism or Conviction?
During 2016-17, Vance was a staunch Trump critic, as revealed in a private Facebook message where he wrote:
“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
Clearly, Vance eventually settled on the former view, and he has been rewarded for it. However, his embrace of MAGA politics doesn’t mean he fully subscribes to its most extreme elements. He remains skeptical of the unfettered deregulation favored by Musk and other pro-progress figures, as evidenced by his enduring support for antitrust enforcement.
One clear sign that Vance hasn’t abandoned his roots is his advocacy for strong regulatory oversight—particularly his praise of Lina Khan’s leadership at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Under Khan, the FTC aggressively pursued cases against monopolistic corporate practices. While figures like Musk, Peter Thiel, and even Democratic billionaire Mark Cuban sought to oust Khan post-2024, Vance stood apart, commending her as one of the few Biden-era officials “doing a pretty good job.”
This divergence illustrates that Vance is not merely a Trumpian figurehead. While he remains aligned with Trump’s anti-establishment rhetoric, his policy stances indicate a distinct ideological foundation rooted in community revitalization.
While Vance may have made political compromises to reach the vice presidency, his trajectory suggests he is far from finished shaping America’s future. If Trump doesn’t make too many irreversible missteps, Vance is well-positioned to be the Republican nominee in 2028. His growing influence—and the battle between pro-culture and pro-progress forces—will define the next chapter of the GOP and, potentially, the nation itself.
What’s Ahead: Progress vs. Culture Defines the GOP’s Future
This ideological battle will likely shape the next decade of the Republican Party and, potentially, America itself. With Democrats struggling to reconcile their pro-progress stance with heavy regulatory barriers, the GOP’s competing visions—unregulated innovation vs. community restoration—will dominate political discourse.
The question remains: What will America choose—progress or culture?