Rift between Trump and Musk escalates to new level

It was almost inevitable, but it has happened a little quicker than many observers predicted. That is the general feeling after the most powerful politician in the world and the richest person in the world, had a falling out that has turned into a bitter feud.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk were seen to be best buddies just a few weeks ago, but now they are trading insults on their own individual social media platforms, with the consequences potentially damaging for both.

The spectacular blow-up between the pair centred around Trump’s so called “big, beautiful” spending bill, which was passed by the US House last month and is awaiting a vote in the Senate.

Musk labelled the bill a “disgusting abomination” arguing that will irresponsibly add to the US national debt, and encouraged his followers to phone their representatives to express opposition to the spending plan.

It continued to spiral out of control with Musk calling for the president’s resignation, stating that the global tariff plan would trigger a US recession.

This was followed by Trump threatening to terminate the tech billionaire’s governmental subsidies and contracts, which form the lifeblood of his SpaceX programme.

In response Musk said he was accelerating the decommissioning of his Dragon spacecraft, which the US relies on to carry American astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.

He then followed that up by calling for Trump’s impeachment and suggested (without evidence) that the president appears in unreleased files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The South African-born tech tycoon, who was Trump’s biggest campaign donor putting in somewhere in the region of $300 million, went on to claim the Republican would not have won the 2024 election without his support and accused him of “such ingratitude”.

The President’s latest dig suggested that Musk had “lost his mind” dismissing his claims and not entertaining any notion to attempt to patch things up, essentially confirming their “relationship” was over.

Unlikely alliance

Musk and Trump had formed an unlikely, but nevertheless extremely powerful alliance, which had culminated in the tech billionaire being handed a key position in the new administration, with authority to slash budgets.

His Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE as it was known, quickly became one of the biggest stories of Trump’s first few months at the helm, relentlessly shutting entire agencies and hard-heartedly dismissing thousands of government staff members.

The pair flew together on Air Force One to spend weekends at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, and he also slept in the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom at the president’s invitation.

Couldn’t last

It couldn’t last though, and it came to a head when Musk said he was “disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it”.

He said he believed it “undermined” the work DOGE was doing and pointed out that the bill would add an estimated $3.8 trillion to the national deficit.

Plenty of leverage

Musk’s companies including SpaceX, its subsidiary Starlink, and Tesla do a huge amount of business with the US government. Indeed since 2008, SpaceX alone have been awarded $20.9bn in government contracts and in Trump’s mind this gives him plenty of leverage.

On his Truth Social platform he posted: “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!”

“Trump derangement syndrome”

He went on in typical fashion to say: “Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ 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 that in his opinion some people who leave his administration “miss it so badly they actually become hostile”. He called it a sort of “Trump derangement syndrome”.

Epstein comment ignored

With regards to the Epstein claim, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt simply dismissed the comment. In a statement, she said: “This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted.

“The president is focused on passing this historic piece of legislation and making our country great again.”

Epstein killed himself in August 2019 whilst awaiting trial for sex trafficking minors.

New party?

There of course is a possibility that Musk could be prompted to go further than to just withdraw his funding, he could decide to point his riches at an opposition to Trump.

In fact he more or less hinted at such an eventuality when posting on his platform X a question: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”

Opposition enjoying the spat

This has all left the Democrats a little bewildered and unsure how to react. There are some who would happily welcome Musk, a former donor, back to their party, although they would be in the minority.

In the meantime they appear content to let the billionaires slug it out in the public domain and between them damage reputations and opinions; with one thing certain, it is not about to end anytime soon.