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.
