There is only one person who is unquestionably able to both maintain a high level of public visibility and stay on President Donald Trump’s good side. That person is Donald Trump.

Everyone else who sidles up to him suffers from the deficit that they are not Trump himself. They therefore risk discovering that Trump has suddenly turned against them, bringing his fervent base of support — tens of millions of Americans strong — with him. Options from that point are limited: obsequious efforts at reintegration with the President or lining up for one of the modest but endless slots reserved in the public conversation for Trump’s former allies.

It seems likely that Elon Musk, by virtue of his wealth and ownership of the social-media platform X, thought he might be immune to this reality of political physics. As we saw on Thursday — or as anyone with a phone or who knows anyone with a phone saw — he was not. Bickering with the President who brought him to DC in the first place exploded into fury and accusations. If not entirely over, the Trump-Musk alliance is undoubtedly broken.

That leaves the children of this unfortunate marriage — Republican voters, crypto bros, fringe-right pundits, artificial intelligence evangelists — having to choose sides. Republican politicians have to weigh whether Trump’s support is more valuable than Musk’s money. Maga influencers on X have to choose between their hearts and their landlord.

One, the elegantly christened account Catturd, has lined up with the President, apparently prompting Musk to unfollow him. But he’s not alone. Polling released by YouGov in the wake of the conflagration suggests that, among Republicans in particular, there is not much choice between Trump and Musk.

Asked who they would choose between Trump and Musk, 7 in 10 Republicans said Trump, with another 1 in 8 saying neither. (This, unsurprisingly, was the most common answer from Democrats.) Republicans chose Trump over Musk by a nearly 12 to 1 margin.

As an additional measure of how Republicans view Musk, nearly one quarter of them offered support for one of Trump’s fiercer responses to the Musk feud: ending federal contracts and subsidies for Musk’s companies. A third of Republicans opposed the idea — with a large share indicating they were not sure — but the narrow difference between “support” and “oppose” can’t be reassuring for Musk.

YouGov also asked whether respondents thought Musk and Trump would work together again one day, prompting a lot of uncertainty. Among Republicans, a plurality — although slightly less than half — indicated some sort of rapprochement was likely.

Most Americans sagely indicated that they were not sure what the future of the Trump-Musk relationship holds. Nor can any of us, really. After all, to the extent that anyone’s relationships with Trump provide them stability, it is the stability of boats weathering stormy seas by being tied to a dock.

If that dock had the habit of slashing the mooring lines in fits of pique.

• Philip Bump is a Washington Post columnist based in New York. He writes the newsletter How To Read This Chart and is the author of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America