WASHINGTON — In a final push to prevent passage of President Trump’s signature legislation into law, Elon Musk, once his largest benefactor and later his top White House aide, threw the kitchen sink at his former boss.
The world’s richest man threatened to fund primary challenges against supporters of the bill “if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.” He threatened to fund the creation of a third party based on fiscal responsibility. And he accused the president of using the bill as a vehicle to defund the ability of courts to enforce contempt orders, making it all but impossible to hold him and his allies accountable for violating the law.
There is still a slim chance that Musk succeeds. But a Senate vote approving the bill on Tuesday brought Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” to the doorstep of passage. The only thing standing in its way now is a handful of Republican lawmakers in the House.
Trump reacted to Musk’s campaign on Tuesday with a pointed threat. The Department of Government Efficiency, a federal program Musk ran at the start of the administration that aimed to reduce federal spending, could be directed to gut Musk’s properties of federal contracts, the president warned.
“We might have to put DOGE on Elon,” Trump said. Musk owns SpaceX, an aerospace company with deep ties to NASA, as well as Tesla and the X social media platform. “You know what DOGE is? The monster that might have to go back and eat Elon — wouldn’t that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies.”
“If DOGE looks at Musk, we’re going to save a fortune,” Trump later added. “I don’t think he should be playing that game with me.”
The “Big Beautiful Bill” included several provisions that could have rankled Musk, including a phaseout of green energy tax credits passed during the Biden administration that have benefited companies like Tesla.
But Musk said his priority in the bill was not its impact on the electric vehicle market. Instead, his concern is its overall price tag — a ballooning of the federal debt over the next decades that he said fundamentally undermines his work in the administration.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the Senate version of the bill will add $4 trillion to the debt by 2034, and even more if Congress votes later on to remove a series of expiration dates built into the legislation.
Musk left the Trump administration at the end of his tenure as a special government employee in late May, honored in the Oval Office by Trump with a press conference and a custom embroidered key. But the men fell out dramatically days later, trading insults in an acrimonious public feud that included Musk taking credit for Trump’s election victory.
Even within the last few days, Trump has offered mixed messages on the state of his relationship with Musk, wishing him only the best in an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business.
By Tuesday morning, he was telling reporters that he would “take a look” at deporting Musk, a U.S. citizen.
“Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “and head back to South Africa.”
