It seems that everyone in Trump’s circle — and even the president-elect himself — is finding out pretty abruptly what the trade-off is when you have a major donor who gives you $120 million and all the free advertising you can handle.

Elon Musk, eccentric billionaire and erratic guest, has proven to be more than what Trump and his steady team of longtime supporters are used to. He clearly sees himself as equally important to those who have been by Trump’s side for years.

It’s not clear whether he believes that because he thinks he’s owed it for all the money he spent to get Trump elected, or whether he actually thinks that Trump likes him best. I’m leaning toward the latter; Musk has dubbed himself the “First Buddy” and has a history of not having many friends.

It’s largely agreed-upon that Musk is somewhere on the autism spectrum. That’s relatively common, now that diagnoses are less stigmatized. But it’s pretty rare to see someone get from even high-functioning success on their own to assimilating seamlessly into a team. And Elon Musk is used to being a pretty big fish.

Last week, things came to a head at Mar-a-Lago between Musk and one of Trump’s longest-serving advisors, Boris Epshteyn.

In a new report from Axios, sources told the news outlet that an exchange between the two men that was called a “huge explosion” and a “massive blowup” took place at a dinner table in front of guests.

It looks like the two have different ideas of what Trump’s Cabinet should look like. Some of the confusion has to be blamed on Trump; after he appointed Musk to lead a “Department” of Government Efficiency — although it’s not a real department, since those require Congressional action — Musk definitely took from that the idea that he’d be able to hire and fire people.

Although that’s never been expressly said, it’s clear that this is what Musk thinks.

In a pretty rare how-do-you-do for me, I find myself siding with Musk on the specifics this time. The tension arose out of Musk questioning the qualifications of Epshteyn’s picks for Cabinet-level heads and even White House counsel. Epshteyn was the one to suggest Florida’s Matt Gaetz the lead the Justice Department, which Musk rightfully saw as foolhardy.

But at dinner that night, what may have started as a polite disagreement at some point turned into a full-blown rivalry. Despite Epshteyn’s insistence that he didn’t know what Musk was talking about, the billionaire accused Epshteyn of leaking details of Trump’s transition to the press.

That included personnel picks.

It doesn’t appear to have been surprising to those who have been around since the election. The sources Axios spoke to said that they’d seen “tensions between them bubble up during the transition meetings.”

The most recent development — since the blowup, that is — is Musk’s push to see Howard Lutnick named Treasury Secretary over his rival, Scott Bessent, a hedge fund manager. In fact, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has thrown his own weight behind Lutnick, who is currently Trump’s transition chief.

The whole thing has already become a battle of wills, and reports from all sides, including the New York Times and others, are saying that Trump is becoming annoyed by all of it. The longer people argue about who gets what position, the less time he has to throw ketchup at walls and watch Fox News while tweeting from the toilet.

It might be a collection of pretty weird habits, but Trump is definitely a creature of habit, and he doesn’t like his routine to be disturbed too much.

But odds are this is going to turn into something bigger. I, for one, am here for it. The more the Trump administration ends up looking like reality TV, the less of his disastrous agenda will be enacted.

The only thing left to determine is who Trump will ultimately get more annoyed with. He knows he has to get to work eventually, and if the factions inside Trumpworld can’t settle their differences, one side or the other is going to get the Laura Loomer treatment and simply be jettisoned into the ether.

It’s wishful thinking to hope for an asteroid to just take care of the whole mess for us, but I don’t mind saying that I’m still going to hope and wish.

In the meantime, I suppose, we can all sit back and enjoy the show as it unfolds. I have a feeling it’s going to be more than just a fender bender. This is going to be a 20-car pileup.