- President Trump and Elon Musk, two of the world’s most powerful men, are having a public falling-out after Musk came out against Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill. Musk believes the bill would hurt Tesla, as it would cut subsidies for electric vehicles, and undo much of the cost-cutting work he did at DOGE.
Just one day after House Speaker Mike Johnson said he had spoken to President Trump about Elon Musk’s X posts raging against his “big, beautiful bill,” Musk has doubled down and shifted his focus to the president himself.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote on his social network, X.
“Such ingratitude,” he added.
Musk continued with more posts digging at Trump, including one that dredged up his old tweets that talked about the debt ceiling and asked, “Where is this guy today??”
Tesla’s stock is taking a beating. Shares are down 10% as of 2:30 p.m. ET Thursday.
Musk’s initial jab at Trump was in response to a video posted on X that showed the president answering questions in the Oval Office about Musk coming out against the spending bill.
“I would have won Pennsylvania regardless of Elon,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “I’m very disappointed with Elon. He knew this bill better than anyone and he only developed a problem when he found out I would cut the EV mandate.”
The spending bill indeed calls for ending the $7,500 electric-vehicle subsidies by the end of 2025—tax credits Tesla has benefited from for many years.
“It’s not just Elon, I think when some people leave [the White House] they miss it so badly they develop a type of TDS,” Trump said Thursday. “Some embrace it, and some become hostile.”
The term TDS refers to “Trump derangement sydrome,” which the president and his allies have used to describe people who have an irrational hatred of Trump, due to his political positions or otherwise, often in an attempt to discredit them.
Musk has been busy ripping Trump’s bill for the past 48 hours. On Tuesday, he called it a “massive, outrageous, pork-filled” spending plan and a “disgusting abomination” that would add trillions to the federal deficit, thus undoing the cost-cutting work he spearheaded at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk’s 130-day term as a special government employee ended last week.
In his weekly press conference, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said he believed Musk was “flat wrong” about the bill and mentioned the president was “not delighted that Elon did a 180 on that.”
Aside from slashing the EV tax credit, the Trump-backed spending package also carves out $350 billion for national security, border security, and deportations, while hacking away at green-energy tax breaks and adding requirements for some adults on Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, that would likely result in lower spending for those programs.
The White House claims the bill would boost GDP by 2.6% to 3.2% in the long term while upping the debt limit, currently at $36 trillion, by another $4 trillion, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next decade. The CBO also estimates the number of Americans without health insurance would increase to the tune of 10.9 million people over the next decade.
“Call your Senator, Call your Congressman,” Musk wrote on X. “Bankrupting America is NOT ok!”
