In another salvo in the dayslong fight with his former senior adviser, President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to cut Elon Musk’s federal subsidies and contracts, saying it’s the “easiest way” for the U.S. to save “billions and billions” of dollars.
Further, Trump said Musk was “wearing thin,” which is why the president “asked him to leave” the administration. Trump’s posts came a few hours after telling reporters that the once “great relationship” with the SpaceX and Tesla CEO might be permanently altered.
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!” Trump said in a post to Truth Social.
Musk fired back a short time later, “In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.”
In an earlier post, Trump said, “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!”
Musk quickly replied on X, “Such an obvious lie. So sad.”
The posts have added to the stunning fallout between the president and Musk, the erstwhile chief of the Department of Government Efficiency, which started Tuesday afternoon when Musk called Trump’s “big, beautiful” sweeping tax and policy bill a “disgusting abomination.” Since then, most acutely on Thursday, the pair have been lobbing social media bombs at each other.
Trump told reporters Thursday that Musk was “upset” that Trump yanked the NASA nomination of Jared Isaacman on Saturday, 24 hours after Trump held an Oval Office sendoff for Musk.
“I can understand why he’s upset,” Trump told reporters Thursday.
Musk posted a series of rebukes of Trump’s remarks in real time Thursday, including saying Trump owes his election to him and adding Republicans would have lost the Senate.
“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 X, responding to a video where Trump said “I would have won Pennsylvania regardless of Elon.”
Trump suggested the electric vehicle mandate ending bothered Musk, too.
“Elon is upset because we took the EV mandate, and you know, which was a lot of money for electric vehicles,” Trump told reporters. “And, you know, they’re having a hard time the electric vehicles. And they want us to pay billions of dollars in subsidy.”
Musk fired back at the EV claim, repeating his contention that the Trump criticism had nothing to do with that, and rejecting Trump’s claim that Musk was privy to the crafting of the House GOP legislation.
“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!” Musk wrote in another scathing X rebuke.
This story has been updated.
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