If there’s one core similarity between Elon Musk and President Trump, it’s that they share many of their immediate, fleeting thoughts unfiltered online.
For years, the two men have built huge followings sharing their perspectives online. Now, on different sides of a monumental breakup, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump are dealing with it as they always have: by posting through it.
On X, the platform that Mr. Musk bought in 2022 for $44 billion, the world’s richest man has called Mr. Trump a liar and claimed that the president had connections to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender. Mr. Musk controls the largest account on the site, with more than 220 million followers, and had wielded X as a battering ram to support the president over the past few months.
Mr. Trump, who has majority control of Truth Social, turned to that social network as his battle station. With nearly 10 million followers there, the president threatened the federal contracts of Mr. Musk’s companies. He also claimed that Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, “went CRAZY” over the elimination of federal tax credits and subsidies for electric vehicles in the policy bill that the president is trying to push through Congress.
On Thursday, both men appeared hyperaware of what the other was posting. Mr. Musk replied on X to screenshots of Mr. Trump’s Truth Social posts, including the one about his supposed anger over the ending of the electric vehicle mandate.
“Such an obvious lie,” Mr. Musk wrote, racking up 80,000 likes and more than 9,000 reposts. “So sad.”
The open acrimony between the two men comes after the billionaire denounced President Trump’s signature domestic policy bill as an “abomination.”
Whenever we talk about taking an ugly blow or getting a black eye in politics, it’s nearly always metaphorical. But leave it to this failing Donald Trump regime, and Elon Musk in particular, to somehow make these sayings apply literally – and in the stupidest way possible.
Main Points:
- Musk’s leverage: Elon Musk created a poll on X that asked his followers if there should be a “new political party” that represents “the 80 percent in the middle.” He has often portrayed himself as a centrist, despite his engagement with right-wing leaders around the world. Although he promised $100 million to groups controlled by the Trump political operation, he has not delivered it, and could funnel his considerable wealth into this idea as his next political project.
- Financial impact: Tesla’s stock prices dropped and shares in publicly traded competitors to Musk’s space exploration company SpaceX rose in value amid the public spat.
- Stephen Bannon: One of the most vocal critics of Musk for months, Mr. Bannon said he was advising the president to cancel all of Mr. Musk’s contracts and start several investigations into the world’s richest man.
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The unlikely alliance of two mercurial billionaires deteriorated in remarkably swift and public fashion over the course of a few hours on Thursday, as Elon Musk and President Trump sniped at each other from their own social media platforms, escalating their feud with incendiary attacks over matters significant and petty.
What started as simply a fight over Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill mushroomed into who deserved more credit for Mr. Trump’s election victory, why Mr. Musk did not cover up his black eye with makeup during an Oval Office appearance last week and Mr. Trump’s abrupt drop in support for a Musk associate nominated to lead NASA.
Their sparring swiftly degenerated into threats on social media, as Mr. Trump questioned whether the government should cut its billions of dollars in contracts with Mr. Musk’s companies, and Mr. Musk claimed that there were references to Mr. Trump in government documents about the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while also seemingly approving of calls for Mr. Trump to be impeached.
Until last week, Mr. Musk was a top presidential adviser. But their fraying relationship finally unraveled on Thursday, months after their marriage of convenience — Mr. Trump had the political base, Mr. Musk had the money and social media might — helped enable Mr. Trump to return to the presidency.
Mr. Musk deployed over $250 million to back Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. After Mr. Trump won, he gave Mr. Musk free rein to slash the federal work force. Just last week, Mr. Trump gave Mr. Musk a personal send-off in the Oval Office, praising him as “one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced,” while Mr. Musk promised to remain a “friend and adviser to the president.”
But while meeting on Thursday with Friedrich Merz, Germany’s new chancellor, in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump broke days of uncharacteristic silence and unloaded on Mr. Musk, saying he was “very disappointed in Elon.”
The billionaire responded quickly on X.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Mr. Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude,” he added, taking credit for Mr. Trump’s election.
Mr. Musk in recent days had mostly trained his ire on Republicans in Congress, not Mr. Trump himself. But he discarded that caution on Thursday, ridiculing the president in a pattern familiar to the many previous Trump advisers who have fallen out of favor.
Musk and Trump appeared together in the Oval Office yesterday, in their now familiar pose of Trump sitting slumped at the desk while Musk towered over his shoulder. This was a surreal scene, given that Trump and Musk pretty much just got divorced, with Musk officially quitting DOGE while appearing to disapprove of Trump’s budget bill. This was amid reports that Musk was essentially forced to go back to work at Tesla by its largest shareholders. Then there was Musk’s black eye.
No, really. While this scene was playing out in the Oval Office, Musk literally had a black eye. He claimed that he told his son to punch him in the face, and his son obliged. So either Musk is one of the most deranged parents of all time, or he had to make this story up in order to cover up an even uglier scenario. I’m not sure which is more embarrassing.
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There are more important and consequential things going on in politics right now, including Trump’s monstrous budget bill that would screw over pretty much everyone who’s not a wealthy friend of Trump. But Elon Musk sporting a black eye given to him by a child while trying to explain why he’s quitting the Trump regime? Sometimes politics provides us with little moments of catharsis at least allow us to smirk for a moment before we head right back into fighting the good fight.
Donald Trump keeps holding coronavirus press conferences each day, with each one being an uglier spectacle than the last. It’s gotten so bad that the cable news networks keep cutting away from portions of the press briefings, in order to correct the false information that Trump keeps spewing. Now, today, there isn’t going to be a press conference. So what’s going on?
The White House announced around noon eastern time that there was going to be a full lid for the day, which means White House correspondents can go home, which means there won’t be a press conference today. Why not? Sure, Donald Trump could be sick, but there’s no evidence of this yet. Trump could also be sneaking out to play golf, but as of yet there’s no evidence of this either.
We should probably look to a more straightforward explanation. Yesterday, Trump’s babysitters sent him out there to read a highly conciliatory script, meaning they thought he needed to walk back his deranged behavior, for fear of his presidency slipping away from him. Instead, Trump ended up putting on his most profoundly deranged performance yet, cursing out the Inspector General and threatening to poison himself with a potentially fatal drug.
The most logical explanation here is that Donald Trump’s people convinced him not to do a press conference today because they were afraid he’d go even further over the edge with the cameras watching. That’s right, the President of the United States is an unhinged two year old whose diaper changers are putting him in timeout. Then again, Trump just tweeted that he “may or may not” hold a press conference later today, so it appears he’s already trying to fight back against his babysitters.
