Musk vs. Trump: Billionaire Bromance Blows Up Over GOP Bill

Musk and Trump were on better terms last week.
Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Get your popcorn ready. The burgeoning feud between President Donald Trump and Tesla founder Elon Musk, sparked by differences over the GOP tax and spending bill, got very public and very heated today. Read on for details.

Musk vs. Trump: Billionaire Bromance Blows Up Over GOP Bill

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 a war of words between the two escalated - or devolved - to a whole 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."

Number of the Day: $551 Billion

The Congressional Budget Office had estimated yesterday that the package of tax and spending cuts passed by House Republicans would add $2.4 trillion to deficits from 2025 through 2034. It said Thursday that the bill would also result in an additional $551 billion in interest costs over the 10-year period, raising the total projected cost of the bill to about $3 trillion. The CBO also said that, as a result of the bill, debt held by the public would rise to 123.8% of gross domestic product by 2034, compared with a January 2025 baseline projection of 117.1% without the bill.

Americans Filing for Social Security at Record Rate

The Social Security system is seeing a record number of filings for benefits this year, and experts say it's at least in part a sign of growing concern over the stability of the retirement program.

In the first five months of 2025, the number of people filing for Social Security benefits surged to 1.8 million, an increase of 17% relative to the same period last year, CBS News's Aimee Picchi reports. Filings this year could reach nearly 4 million, a 15% increase from the 3.4 million filings recorded in 2024.

Some of the rise could be related to the growing population of elderly Americans as the baby boomers continue to retire, but the size of the increase exceeds any simple demographic explanation. Another factor could be changes that were made under the Social Security Fairness Act, which expanded eligibility for workers who have public pensions. But perhaps the most intriguing factor is fear, both of declining administrative competency at the agency and its long-run solvency.

Led by Elon Musk's DOGE cost-cutting initiative, the Trump administration has pursued what it has called "significant workforce reductions" at the Social Security Administration, which serves nearly 70 million retirees, disabled people and survivors of deceased workers. The administration has said it plans to reduce staffing at the agency to 50,000, down from 63,000 a decade ago. Experts have warned that the cuts could degrade service and increase the risk of errors in processing claims and maintaining payments. To top it off, the retirement system faces a potential fiscal crisis as soon as 2035, when a revenue shortfall could reduce monthly benefits by about 20%.

Max Richtman, president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, told CBS that some older people have asked him if they should claim benefits early given the Trump administration's interference with the retirement program. "People are scared, and they're not sure what to do," he said.

Richtman added that he advises people not to claim benefits early, even if they are worried about the program, since doing so reduces monthly benefits significantly.

Record Drop in Imports Cuts Trade Deficit in Half

The trade deficit in goods and services narrowed to $61.6 billion in April, the Commerce Department reported Thursday, updating preliminary data released last week.

The monthly deficit decreased by a record 55.5% relative to March, when the trade gap totaled $138.3 billion as businesses scrambled to secure foreign-made products ahead of new tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump in April.

Imports in April fell 16% to $351 billion, the largest monthly decline on record. Imports of consumer goods alone fell by twice as much, or 32%, driven in large part by pharmaceutical products, which drug manufacturers shipped in from overseas in large quantities in March to escape the impending tariffs.

Such a large swing in trade in one month is unusual, especially in the absence of a dramatic event such as a war or recession. "Usually, there's some external shocks that reduce trade, such as the initial parts of the pandemic and the global financial crisis, but here we're actually having policies directly focused on trade doing the reduction," Douglas Irwin, a trade economist at Dartmouth College, told The Wall Street Journal.

Some experts said the big swing is a bit misleading, since it marks a return to something like normal conditions rather than a sea change in the trade system. "There will be big claims made about the declining trade deficit, but less here than meets the eye," said University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers. "The trade deficit grew as folks imported a lot in anticipation of tariffs. The tariffs are here now, so imports are back to normal, and so is the trade deficit."

Still, the huge jolt in trade levels is notable, and could be a sign of things to come. "The big swing in the trade deficit reflects the global trade war," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, told The New York Times. "With the tariffs, goods imports collapsed in April, leading to a much smaller trade deficit."

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