Friday, 6 June 2025

Musk and Trump turn on each other

It was quite a day yesterday. Labour won the Hamilton by-election against the odds, the German chancellor visited The White House, Reform UK’s chairman resigned, Trump banned travelers from twelve countries and the Russian ambassador to the UK accused Britain of colluding with Ukraine in operation ‘Spiders Web’ that destroyed a third of Russia's long-range bomber fleet. But the story that displaced them all was about a spat between two men.  The long-anticipated rift between the world’s two biggest egos has finally erupted. Elon Musk started it all by tweeting that Trump’s “big beautiful bill” was in fact an “abomination.” This came just days after his farewell in the Oval Office where Trump praised Musk - a ‘very smart guy’ - and said he would continue to be around to help his administration. 

Obviously, Musk wasn’t smart enough to keep his mouth shut and will soon be in the MAGA crosshairs. The pair are now engaged in an acrimonious slugfest on their respective social media platforms and it’s only going to escalate further.

Musk said on Tuesday: “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

That marked the first salvo but it might just have been recoverable at that point had Musk confined himself to just criticising Trump's bill. But no, he has continued to escalate things and yesterday it all burst out into open warfare.

In his press conference with Merz, Trump claimed that Musk knew more about the 'big, beautiful bill' (all one thousand pages of it) than anybody, to which Musk responded on Twitter: "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!"

This raised the stakes and when Trump inferred Musk's opposition was down to the ending of EV subsidies, he hit back:

This is not the sort of comment that is likely to endear him to Trump or smooth over the rift. They are both stupid but extremely powerful and vindictive men. Musk spent $277 million getting Trump elected and four months into his presidency has turned on him. How insane does that look now?

Trump is even suggesting he fired Musk (“I asked him to leave”) and has threatened to cut Musk out of government contracts. Musk then responded with a threat of his own:


Musk finished yesterday with a tweet about the ‘real reason’ the Epstein files haven’t been published yet. It’s because Trump’s name appears in them (allegedly!).

Finally, Musk retweeted a post suggesting that in any battle between the two men Musk would win and calling for Trump to be impeached and replaced by JD Vance.

I imagine they both know a lot of stuff about each other so this is by far the worst thing that could have happened. Musk isn’t MAGA, he has the wherewithal to stand up against Trump and is even talking about forming a new party, which he could easily finance.

There are also growing voices in Republican circles - even from lawmakers who voted for the bill in the House of Representatives at 1 am in the morning - who now admit they didn't read it all and have subsequently discovered things in it that they profoundly disagree with.

Many are unhappy that official forecasts point to the debt being increased by $2.4 trillion over ten years when they had been told by Trump that the national debt would be reduced. This is Musk's main objection.

This morning it's a Mexican stand-off with neither man likely to turn away.  The forthcoming conflict is going to look like an epic battle between Superman and General Zod, with massive collateral damage to America, its credibility, its economy, and democratic institutions.

The outcome is totally unpredictable, but it's very, very bad news for Donald Trump.

Posted by at