WASHINGTON — President Trump’s friendship and political alliance with Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who fueled Trump’s campaign with record amounts of cash before working at the White House by his side until last week, appears to be over, with both men leveling searing criticism against one another in a sharp public row.
Musk had been criticizing the Trump administration over its signature legislation, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” for its projected impact on the national debt throughout last week. But his calls to “kill the bill” on Wednesday prompted Trump, speaking to media from the Oval Office, to respond in kind.
“Elon and I had a great relationship, I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump said Thursday. “And he hasn’t said bad things about me personally, but I’m sure that’ll be next. But I’m very disappointed in Elon.”
Musk, responding on his social media platform, X, took credit for Trump’s election victory. The billionaire entrepreneur, whose companies also include SpaceX and Tesla, contributed over $280 million to Trump and other Republicans during the 2024 presidential campaign.
“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. “Such ingratitude.”
Matters only deteriorated as the day progressed. After meeting with the German chancellor, Trump wrote on social media that the “easiest way” to save billions in federal spending would be to “terminate Elon’s government subsidies and contracts.”
“Make my day,” Musk shot back, before claiming in a subsequent post that Trump had withheld the full release of FBI files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender, because they would implicate the president himself.
“Time to drop the really big bomb: Trump is in the Epstein files,” Musk wrote. “That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”
The exchange broke open a feud that had been simmering for weeks out of public view. In private, Musk had relayed concerns over the bill to the president, while expressing disagreement with several other policies, including the establishment of an artificial intelligence campus in the Middle East and Trump’s announcement of global tariffs.
“I agree with much of what the administration does, but we have differences of opinion,” Musk said in a more muted tone last week, speaking in an interview with CBS.
“You know, there are things that I don’t entirely agree with. But it’s difficult for me to bring that up in an interview because then it creates a bone of contention,” he added. “So then, I’m a little stuck in a bind, where I’m like, well, I don’t wanna, you know, speak up against the administration, but I also don’t wanna take responsibility for everything this administration’s doing.”
In the Oval Office, Trump said he believed that Musk had turned on him after he rejected Musk’s recommendation for the head of NASA, a position that could benefit SpaceX, Musk’s spaceship company. He also said that Musk opposed provisions of Trump’s megabill that would phase out tax credits for electric vehicles.
“Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here. Better than you people. He knew everything about it — he had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the 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 said.
“People leave my administration and they love us, and at some point, they miss it so badly, and some of them embrace it, and some of them actually become hostile,” Trump added. “I don’t know what it is.”
But Musk denied he had been shown the bill, responding on X that he wouldn’t mind if the EV provisions remain in the text so long as others, which he said would balloon annual deficits, are cut.
“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!” Musk wrote. “Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released an assessment on Wednesday estimating that the “big, beautiful bill,” which has passed the House and is under consideration in the Senate, would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, and result in 10.9 million Americans losing health insurance coverage over the same period.
At the beginning of the administration, Trump put Musk in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a White House program that intended on cutting federal spending and reducing the deficit. Musk’s tenure in the role, designated as a special government employee, ended last week.
On X, Musk posted a collection of past remarks from Trump warning against growing deficits and congressional actions increasing the debt ceiling, adding, “where is this guy today?”
“Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill,” Musk added. “Slim and beautiful is the way.”
