Political observers have long anticipated that the bromance between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, would fizzle, with the main question being how ugly the eventual breakup would be. The answer has been unfolding publicly this week: The split is increasingly nasty, and the war of words escalated — or devolved — to a new level on Thursday.
As in so many bitter divorces, money is at the heart of the conflict — in this case, the trillions of dollars in tax and spending cuts in Republicans’ massive reconciliation bill. After leaving his role in the administration last week, Musk has been ratcheting up his criticism of that legislation, which is projected to add trillions to the national debt, in dozens of social media posts. Musk on Wednesday launched a push to “Kill the Bill.”
For days, Trump had been uncharacteristically muted in responding to those attacks, but during an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday, the president lashed out at Musk when a reporter asked about the Tesla founder’s comments.
“Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump said.
He also defended the Republican bill and claimed that Musk’s complaints were rooted in the loss of EV tax credits that benefit Tesla. “I’m very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here,” Trump said. “He knew everything about it. He had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed a problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate because that’s billions and billions of dollars.” Trump also said he thinks Musk misses the Oval Office and suggested that Elon, like others who have left his administrations, has developed “Trump derangement syndrome.”
As Trump was speaking to reporters, Musk was responding in real time on social media. He pushed back on Trump’s claim about the EV tax credits, writing that those cuts could stay but lawmakers should “ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill.” And he denied knowing the details of the bill: “False,” he wrote, “this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!”
Then Musk turned to politics — and a subject sure to strike a nerve with Trump. “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote, before adding: “Such ingratitude.”
The clash only got more heated from there. By early afternoon, Musk — who spent nearly $300 million helping Trump get elected — was posting a poll asking whether it was “time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”
Trump unloaded in social media posts of his own: “Elon was ‘wearing thin,’” he wrote in one post, “I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!”
Trump added: “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
Musk then went nuclear with his personal attacks against Trump in a post that alleged that the president’s name is in the files of disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. That post included the sign-off, “Have a nice day, DJT!” Musk also replied “Yes” to a different user’s post suggesting that Trump should be impeached and Vice President JD Vance should replace him. And he predicted that the president’s tariffs “will cause a recession in the second half of this year.”
The bottom line: The GOP’s megabill has now sparked a megabattle between the world’s most powerful man and the world’s richest man, leaving congressional Republicans caught in the middle as they look to advance their tax and spending agenda. Musk may have limited sway with those lawmakers, but he did post this regarding the question of who Republicans should side with: “Some food for thought as they ponder this question: Trump has 3.5 years left as president, but I will be around for 40+ years.”