Trump’s signature ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ precipitated an epic fallout between the US president and his former ally, billionaire Elon Musk
President Trump’s signature “Big Beautiful Bill” has precipitated an epic fallout between the US president and one of his closest allies, billionaire Elon Musk.
The blowup played out publicly on social media, with both men using their respective platforms, X and Truth Social, to exchange criticisms.
Donald Trump kicked off the fight during an Oval Office meeting with German chancellor Friedrich Merz. Asked about Elon Musk’s criticism of his “Big, Beautiful Bill”, the US president told reporters: “Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will any more.”
Trump told reporters he was “very disappointed in Elon”, telling them: “He knew every aspect of this bill. He knew it better than almost anybody, and he never had a problem until right after he left. … He said the most beautiful things about me, and he hasn’t said bad about me personally, but I’m sure that’ll be next, but I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot.”
Soon after Musk posted on X denying Trump’s statement, beginning a flurry of posts that stepped up his feud with the president. Musk wrote: “False, 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!”
He went on to claim that without him Trump would have “lost the election” before bemoaning what he called “such ingratitude”.
The president followed up by threatening to terminate Musk’s government subsidies and contracts, prompting a return threat from the SpaceX boss to decommission the Dragon spacecraft (which brought home astronauts stuck on the ISS for months), potentially throwing US space programmes into turmoil. Hours later Musk rescinded the threat.
Musk also suggested Trump should be impeached and that JD Vance should replace Trump, warning that Trump’s global tariffs would “cause a recession in the second half of this year”.
Musk went on to say on X the reason the Trump administration had not released the files into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was because they implicated the president. The White House called the assertions an “unfortunate episode”.
Meanwhile, Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump ally and Elon Musk critic, suggested there were grounds to deport the tech billionaire, who has US citizenship. Bannon told the New York Times: “They should initiate a formal investigation of his immigration status because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately.”
The spectacular blowout between Trump and Musk sent Tesla shares into free fall. They dropped by about 14.2% on Thursday at market close, wiping roughly $152bn off the value of the company. The decline in Tesla’s share price on Thursday knocked about $8.73bn off Musk’s total net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The reported $152bn drop also decreased the value of the company to roughly $900bn.