Trump threatens to cut Musk’s government contracts as public feud escalates

Michelle L Price, Associated Press

President Donald Trump has threatened to cut Elon Musk’s government contracts as their fractured alliance rapidly escalated into a public feud, with Mr Trump suggesting he would use the US government to hurt his fellow billionaire financially.

The spectacular blow-up between the president of the United States and the world’s richest man played out on their respective social media platforms after Mr Trump first broached the topic in a White House meeting with Germany’s new leader.

The rancorous break-up happened less than a week after they appeared together at the White House and Mr Trump thanked Mr Musk for his brief but tumultuous time in the US government.

Stewed

Mr Trump had largely remained silent as Mr Musk stewed over the last few days on his social media platform X, condemning the president’s signature tax cuts and spending bill.

But Mr Trump clapped back on Thursday in the Oval Office, lamented their frayed relationship and said he was “very disappointed in Musk”.

Mr Musk responded on social media in real time.

Mr Trump ratcheted up the stakes when he turned to his own social media network, Truth Social, and threatened to use the US government to hurt Mr Musk’s bottom line with his internet company Starlink and rocket company SpaceX.

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Mr Trump wrote on his social media network.

“I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

“This just gets better and better,” Mr Musk quickly replied on X.

“Go ahead, make my day.”

The deepening rift unfurled much like their relationship started – rapidly, intensely and very publicly.

It also quickly hit Mr Musk financially, even before Mr Trump’s threat.

Tesla

After Mr Trump started speaking about Mr Musk, shares of his electric vehicle company Tesla fell 9%, their latest notable move since the election.

The shares doubled in the weeks after Mr Trump was elected, gave back those gains and more during Mr Musk’s time at the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) and then rallied after he vowed in April to focus much more on Tesla and his other companies.

Mr Musk later offered up an especially stinging insult to a president sensitive about his standing among voters: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election.”

“Such ingratitude,” Mr Musk said in a follow-up post.

Politicians and their donor patrons rarely see eye to eye.

But the magnitude of Mr Musk’s support for Mr Trump, spending at least 250 million dollars (£184 million) backing his campaign, and the scope of free rein the president gave him to slash and delve into the government with Doge is eclipsed only by the speed of their falling out.

Mr Musk announced his support for Mr Trump shortly after the then-candidate was nearly assassinated on stage at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July.

News of Mr Musk’s political action committee in support of Mr Trump’s election came days later.

Mr Musk soon became a close adviser and frequent companion, memorably leaping in the air behind Mr Trump on stage at a rally in October.

Once Mr Trump was elected, the tech billionaire stood behind him as he took the oath of office, flew with him on Air Force One for weekend stays at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, slept in the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom at the president’s invitation and joined his cabinet meetings wearing a MAGA hat (sometimes more than one).

“I’ll be honest, I think he missed the place,” Mr Trump said on Thursday.

“He got out there, and all of a sudden he wasn’t in this beautiful Oval Office.”

Black eye

Mr Musk bid farewell to Mr Trump last week in a subdued news conference in the Oval Office, where he sported a black eye that he said came from his young son but that seemed to be a metaphor for his messy time in government service.

Mr Trump, who rarely misses an opportunity to zing his critics on appearance, brought it up on Thursday.

“I said, ‘Do you want a little makeup? We’ll get you a little makeup.’ Which is interesting,” Mr Trump said.

The Republican president’s comments came as Mr Musk has stewed for days on social media about Mr Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”, warning that it will increase the federal deficit.

Mr Musk has called the bill a “disgusting abomination”.

“He hasn’t said bad about me personally, but I’m sure that will be next,” Mr Trump said on Thursday in the Oval Office.

“But I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot.”

Observers had long wondered if the friendship between the two brash billionaires known for lobbing insults online would flame out in spectacular fashion.

It did, in less than a year.

“Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” Mr Trump said.

The president said some people who leave his administration “miss it so badly” and “actually become hostile”.

“It’s sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it,” he said.

He brushed aside the billionaire’s efforts to get him elected last year, including a one million dollar-a-day voter sweepstakes in Pennsylvania.

The surge of cash Mr Musk showed he was willing to spend seemed to set him up as a highly coveted ally for Republicans going forward, but his split with Mr Trump, the party’s leader, raises questions about whether they or any others will see such a campaign windfall in the future.

Tax credits

Mr Trump said Mr Musk, the chief executive and founder of Tesla, “only developed a problem” with the bill because it rolls back tax credits for electric vehicles.

“False,” Mr Musk fired back on his social media platform as the president continued speaking.

“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!”

In another post, he said Mr Trump could keep the spending cuts but “ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill”.

The bill would unleash trillions of dollars in tax cuts and slash spending but also spike deficits by 2.4 trillion dollars over a decade and leave some 10.9 million more people without health insurance, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, which for decades has served as the official scorekeeper of legislation in Congress.

Besides Mr Musk being “disturbed” by the electric vehicle tax credits, Mr Trump said another point of contention was Mr Musk’s promotion of Jared Isaacman to run Nasa.

Mr Trump withdrew Mr Isaacman’s nomination over the weekend, days after Mr Musk left his government role.

“I didn’t think it was appropriate,” Mr Trump said, calling Mr Isaacman “totally a Democrat”.

Mr Musk, reverting to his main form of political activity before he joined forces with Mr Trump, continued slinging his responses on social media.

He shared some posts Mr Trump made over a decade ago criticising Republicans for their spending, musings made when he, too, was just a billionaire lobbing his thoughts on social media.

“Where is the man who wrote these words?” Mr Musk wrote.

“Was he replaced by a body double!?”