Tension between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump began on Tuesday with the tech billionaire’s criticism of the so-called big, beautiful bill and came to a head on Thursday, June 5. Musk made one X post per day on the third and fourth – but he flooded the platform with escalating comments on Thursday, ramping up from opposing the bill to accusing Trump of being in the Jeffrey Epstein files to backing a call for the president’s impeachment.
Then – just as quickly as the odd conflagration flared up to begin with – it seemed the fiery feud burned itself out. Like the tri-motor Cybertruck’s impressive 0 to 60 time of 2.6 seconds, Elon went from friend to foe at breakneck speed – only to seemingly want to make peace “for the benefit of our great country” before the day ended.
A Friendship Wrecked by Beauty?
Elon Musk announced a scaling back of his duties at DOGE about a month ago, promising to phase himself out of the administration and get back to work at Tesla and his other business interests. That exodus began in earnest during the waning days of May. The image was one of a friendly parting. Musk was leaving his baby in the good hands of the Trump administration, which would continue his progress throughout the next year or so – and, of course, he was welcome to come back any time.
But there was trouble brewing, apparently, and it would not be contained.
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk tweeted at 1:31 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, June 3. “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,” he continued. Then, at 2:07 a.m., Musk posted, “It more than defeats all the cost savings achieved by the @DOGE team at great personal cost and risk.”
On Thursday, however, Musk seemed to spiral into … something. A fit of rage, perhaps? Or maybe frustration? It was a strange day for social media posts from both the tech mogul and the president, who finally engaged in what now appeared clearly to be a feud.
At 10:52 a.m., Musk retweeted a post claiming most Republican voters “agree with Elon and want the BBB trimmed down.” He replied with the caption: “Yes.” At 11:29 a.m. and 11:46 a.m., Musk reposted old tweets from the president criticizing lawmakers for raising the debt ceiling and saying they shouldn’t be re-elected if the budget wasn’t balanced by the end of their terms.
At noon, Trump finally got involved, confirming to reporters in the Oval Office that the friendship seemed to be falling apart. “Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” he told them. “I was surprised because, you were here – everybody in this room practically was here as we had a wonderful send-off. He said wonderful things about me. You couldn’t have nicer. He said the best things. He’s worn the hat – Trump was right about everything – and I am right about the great big beautiful bill.”
At 12:10 p.m. Eastern, Musk tweeted: “Slim Beautiful Bill for the win,” followed by what seemed to be a rant about cuts to green energy initiatives at 12:19. “Whatever. Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill,” he wrote. “In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that [sic] both big and beautiful.”
Could it be that all this stems from a disagreement in the size and shape of the spending bill? Well, it has long been said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder – and it certainly wouldn’t be the first friendship to wreck upon the rocks of disputed beauty. But another possibility emerges in Musk’s tweets and Trump’s rebuttals.
Trump Fires Back, and Musk Escalates Wildly
While talking to reporters Thursday, Trump also expressed his disappointment in Elon Musk’s sudden 180. “Elon knew the inner workings of the bill better than anybody sitting here,” the president explained. “He had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem & he only developed the problem when he found out we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate.” He also said that, while Musk had not said anything ugly about him yet, he was sure that was next.
As it turns out, his words were prophetic.
Musk, who has spoken out against EV credits in the past for their detrimental effects on healthy competition, reposted a segment of a video in which Trump uttered those words, replying: “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!”
Cue the escalations.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the elections, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk posted to X at 12:46 p.m. – adding in a follow-up post: “much ingratitude.” At 1:42, he encouraged lawmakers to keep the EV cuts but trim the “crazy spending increases in the Big Ugly Bill,” lest America go bankrupt. A couple of minutes later, he claimed the “Big Ugly Bill” would increase the deficit to $2.5 trillion – and, two minutes later, “Kill Bill.”
Just before 2 p.m., Musk posted a poll on X asking whether it’s time to create a new political party “that actually represents the 80% in the middle.” As of midnight Friday morning, over four million people had voted – with 81% saying “Yes.” He continued tweeting about the budget bill, aiming his posts at Trump, Jerome Powell, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD).
At 2:37, Trump posted on Truth Social: “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!”
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump continued. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
Musk refuted the claim about ten minutes later, saying: “Such an obvious lie. So sad.” Over the next two hours or so, he went on to claim that Trump was withholding the Epstein files because he’s in them, adding, “The truth will come out.” He then threatened to decommission the SpaceX Dragon, which has been used to ferry NASA astronauts from the International Space Station, and agreed with an X user who called for the impeachment of Donald Trump. By 4:30, he had attacked the president’s tariffs, saying they would cause a recession in the second half of the year.
It’s hard to say for certain if it was the perceived ugliness of the big budget bill that set Musk into his fury or, as Trump said, the loss of EV credits and government contracts. The latter would, perhaps, best explain the timeline.
The Hotter the Blaze, the Faster It Burns Out
But as quickly as this odd but fiery feud flared up, it seemed to die back down on the same day.
An X user with just 200 followers posted: “This is a shame this back and forth. You are both better than this. Cool off and take a step back for a couple of days,” to which Musk replied: “Good advice. Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon.”
At 4:40 p.m., Bill Ackman, an ally of both Trump and Musk, said they should “make peace for the benefit of our great country.” Musk replied just before 8:30 with: “You’re not wrong.”
It was a whiplash-inducing day that left Americans – and elected officials who found themselves stuck in the middle – confused. Perhaps answers will emerge on Friday. According to Politico’s White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns, who said she spoke to the president Thursday night, the two men may meet to clear the air. The best way to sum up this whole crazy tale may be a post by Adrian Dittman, retweeted by Musk: “The worlds [sic] greatest fiction writers couldn’t have conceived of a timeline like this.”
