After Elon Musk called Peter Navarro a "moron," the WH press secretary said, "Boys will be boys."

But it's not that simple: They're not children; they're exceedingly powerful men in a White House that's increasingly divided against itself.

Late last week, simmering tensions between Peter Navarro, Donald Trump’s top adviser on trade policy, and Elon Musk started to boil over. It led a Fox News host to ask Navarro on Sunday, “Peter, is there a rift internally?” Navarro replied, “No. ... It’s fine. There’s no rift here.”

He might want to revise that answer. NBC News reported:

Elon Musk on Tuesday blasted President Donald Trump’s top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, as a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” in a spat that underscores the discord among the president’s top allies over his sweeping tariffs set to go into effect this week.

Let’s take a moment to review how we arrived at this point.

After considerable behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt about White House tensions over the president’s policy on tariffs, the fissures started to reach the public late last week, when Musk took a veiled rhetorical shot at Navarro via social media — though Trump’s top campaign donor did not mention Navarro by name.

A day later, Musk delivered public remarks in which he made clear that he disagreed with Trump’s trade tariffs, though he again made no specific references to Navarro, who’s helping steer the White House’s tariffs policy.

The day after that, Navarro appeared on Fox News and said that Musk “didn’t understand” what he was talking about on tariffs. He added, “Look, Elon, when he’s in his DOGE lane is great, but we understand what’s going on here? Do we just have to understand? Elon sells cars, and he’s in Texas assembling cars that have big parts of that car from Mexico, China, batteries come from Japan, or China, electronics come from Taiwan, and he’s simply protecting his own interests, as any business person would do.”......

Asked about the dispute, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, “Boys will be boys.” The problem with the assessment, however, is that Musk and Navarro are grown men with incredibly powerful and influential jobs, helping steer a radical policy agenda that is shaping global events.

Their dispute, in other words, is not the stuff of playgrounds.

I won’t pretend to know how this will shake out in the West Wing, though it’s worth noting that the last time Musk clashed with colleagues at the White House, Trump reportedly allowed the back-and-forth to continue, “as if he were watching a tennis match.”

In a normal administration, a president would intervene and prevent this feud from continuing, if no other reason than to signal to the public that the White House is united behind a single vision — and not a White House divided against itself. There’s no reason, however, to expect Team Trump to act like a normal administration.