Another Divorce for Trump
He needs space: Yesterday, President Donald Trump and his right-hand man, former head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and occasionally-present CEO of X, Tesla, and SpaceX, Elon Musk, had a colossal blowup that played out in public, conducted primarily via X and Truth Social for all to see. At one point, Trump said he’d pull all the government subsidies and contracts Musk benefits from. At another, Musk accused Trump of being in the Epstein files, implying he was a frequent visitor to Pedo Island. The two, once thick as thieves, appear to be splitting up. Let me break it down for you.
It started with a Musk tweet over—oddly enough—government spending.
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” Musk wrote on X on Tuesday. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
The “big, beautiful bill” is Trump’s first major legislative accomplishment of the term, currently likely to pass in the Senate after making it through the House.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in an interview with CBS last week. “I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”
Musk is right on that last point, but the idea that the bill—which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade—”undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing” is laughable. If Musk had actually been committed to tackling government spending, he would have approached cutting entitlements. He was only ever working with the discretionary portion of the budget, (so roughly one quarter, max). What he actually accomplished with the discretionary budget was slapdash and overhyped, focused on staffing cuts—many of which were not especially meritocratic, and done via improper authority (and thus partially undone by the courts)—and, like, canceling software licenses (for which duplicates exist due to the classified vs. unclassified nature of government work). There’s been some admirable digitization and calling attention to waste within the U.S. Agency for International Development (with accompanying cuts). Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D–Mass.) Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been essentially stopped in its tracks, with its fate presently unclear. But for Musk to act like his efforts amounted to anything much in the way of truly trimming the federal budget is silly.
That said, anyone talking fiscally conservative talk in public is a friend of mine indeed, so let’s not worry too much about the veracity of Musk’s claim: He has an issue with the spending bill, so now Trump has an issue with him. (Some Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) retweetage surely didn’t help.)
Absolutely https://t.co/OPfIN3wdzw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2025
“Elon and I had a great relationship, I don’t know if we will anymore…And he hasn’t said bad about me personally, but I’m sure that’ll be next. But I’m very disappointed in Elon,” said Trump yesterday when reporters asked him about the comments. “I’ve helped Elon a lot.” Trump also recently declared he would’ve won Pennsylvania without Musk’s support, which escalated matters.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” countered Musk on X. “Such ingratitude.”
“Oh and some food for thought as they ponder this question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years,” he added.
Then he started going really nuclear:
Time to drop the really big bomb:@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.
Have a nice day, DJT!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
Trump’s sort of flaccid response:
President Trump responds after Elon Musk accused him of being in the Epstein files. pic.twitter.com/TnogRC9R9X
— The Immortal (@TheImmortal007) June 5, 2025
“Elon’s upset because we took the [electric vehicle] mandate and—you know, which was a lot of money for electric vehic
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