Through a panoramic series of actions, President Donald Trump is transforming the federal government into a vast machine for rewarding his allies and punishing those he considers his adversaries.

Trump declined to go all-out in his attacks on Musk and counseled the vice president to show restraint in his comments about Musk, preserving a possible bridge.

Steven Bannon, the influential Trump adviser who has long been critical of Musk, crowed that the tech billionaire’s attacks on Trump were so personal that he won’t be forgiven by the MAGA crowd. “Only the fanboys are going to stick with him—he’s a man without a country,” Bannon told us.

By creating DOGE, the Tesla billionaire became a heat shield for the Republican Party’s worst instincts. In his role as head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk spent several months gleefully subjecting parts of the government he doesn’t like to an array of metaphorical power tools.

President Donald Trump said Friday that he has little appetite for reconciling with Elon Musk any time soon, signaling he’s eager to move on to other topics following their extraordinary public blow-up.