Live Updates: Trump-Musk Alliance Dissolves as They Hurl Personal Attacks
The open acrimony between the two men comes after the billionaire denounced President Trump’s signature domestic policy bill as an “abomination.”
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Elon Musk and President Trump at the Oval Office last week. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
President Trump’s and Elon Musk’s alliance dissolved into open acrimony over the course of just about an hour on Thursday, with the two men hurling personal attacks at each other over matters both significant and petty.
What started as simply a fight over Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill sharply escalated into who deserved more credit for Mr. Trump’s election victory and why Mr. Musk did not cover up a black eye with makeup.
While meeting with Friedrich Merz, Germany’s new chancellor, in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump broke days of uncharacteristic silence and unloaded on Mr. Musk, who until last week was a top presidential adviser.
“I’m very disappointed in Elon,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ve helped Elon a lot.”
As the president criticized Mr. Musk, the billionaire responded in real time on X, the social media platform he owns.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Mr. Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude,” he added, taking credit for Mr. Trump’s election in a way that he never has before.
By Thursday afternoon, Mr. Musk was floating leaving the Republican Party to form a new entity. Mr. Trump, for his part, was accusing him of “Trump derangement syndrome.”
Mr. Musk had been careful in recent days to train his ire on Republicans in Congress, not Mr. Trump himself. But he discarded that caution on Thursday, ridiculing the president in a pattern familiar to the many previous Trump advisers who have fallen out of favor.
Here’s what else to know:
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A shattered alliance: The public break comes after a remarkable partnership between the two men. Mr. Musk deployed over $250 million to back Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. After Mr. Trump won, he gave Mr. Musk free rein to slash the federal work force. Just last week, Mr. Trump gave Mr. Musk a personal send-off in the Oval Office, praising him as “one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced,” while Mr. Musk promised to remain a “friend and adviser to the president.”
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Online chaos: Now unshackled from loyalty to the Trump party line, Mr. Musk has returned to fomenting chaos on X. Mr. Musk panned the president’s signature domestic policy bill as a “disgusting abomination” and telling House members who voted for it: “You know you did wrong.” Mr. Musk has often criticized legislation, agencies and others that are against the interests of himself and his companies, which include the electric carmaker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX.
Kate Conger, Michael Gold and Jonathan Swan contributed reporting.
Trump is also threatening to cut Musk’s government contracts.
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” he wrote on Truth Social. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
As lawmakers weigh how to react to the feud between President Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire issued a warning on X suggesting he could cause problems in their future political careers. “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,” Musk wrote.
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President Trump is now responding to Elon Musk on Truth Social. The president said he asked Musk, who was “wearing thin,” 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!” Trump wrote.
Asked if he was concerned that Elon Musk was turning his back on Trump and attacking what the president has dubbed his “big, beautiful bill,” Senator Rick Scott of Florida said that Musk was a “patriot” for caring about the deficit and argued that it was possible to balance a budget while supporting Trump’s agenda. Of Musk, he said “I’m appreciative that he cares.“
Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, downplayed any concern that Elon Musk might use his sizable fortune to back primary challengers to Republicans who did not support revising the domestic policy bill to meet his criticisms. “Who’s got the best ideas, they should win,” Scott said at the Capitol. “And so Elon Musk, he’s got money, just like you’ve got money. It’s best to invest your money in people that you believe are going to do the best thing for you.”
Ashley St. Clair, a right-leaning writer who has a child with Musk but is estranged from the billionaire, jumped into the discussion on X. “Hey @realDonaldTrump lmk if u need any breakup advice,” she wrote.
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Elon Musk still holds a bit of leverage over President Trump. Musk told the White House that he planned to donate about $100 million to Trump-controlled groups, as Maggie Haberman and I reported in March. But as of last week, that donation had yet to be made.
The fracturing relationship between President Trump and Elon Musk presents a tricky moment for the so-called Tech Right, a small but vocal group of elite Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who have in recent years embraced both the president and the world’s richest man.
That is especially true for members of the “All-In” podcast, a popular show started by three entrepreneurs and venture capitalists — David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya and Jason Calacanis. They have gained notoriety in the largely liberal tech industry for their alignment with right-wing politics.
Mr. Sacks also has ties to the Trump administration. In 2024, he was appointed Cryptocurrency and Artificial Intelligence czar.
Most of the group, however, is tied closely to Mr. Musk. Mr. Sacks and Mr. Calacanis advised the tech billionaire during his acquisition of Twitter, now known as X, in 2022, and regularly hosts him on their podcast.
The men generally agree on political issues. They oppose progressive causes and want to tamp down regulation in key areas like A.I. and crypto.
In recent weeks, some of the Tech Right have criticized Mr. Trump’s decisions in public. When the president enacted steep tariffs that threatened to upset the supply chains of some Silicon Valley startups, founders posted on X, questioning the decisions.
Many entrepreneurs also turned to another trusted ally to weigh in on the matter: Mr. Musk.
Elon Musk often uses polls on social media to build consensus around decisions he wants to make. In late 2022, after he bought Twitter, he used a poll to ask users if he should bring back Trump’s then-suspended account, an action he had already signaled his support for. A few weeks after that, he used another poll to ask his followers if he should step down as chief executive of Twitter.
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Elon Musk launched a poll on X that asked his followers if there should be a “new political party” that represents “the 80 percent in the middle.” The billionaire has often portrayed himself as a centrist, despite his engagement with right-wing leaders around the world. Although he promised $100 million to groups controlled by the Trump political operation, he has not delivered it, and could funnel his considerable wealth into this idea as his next political project.
After Trump claimed Musk was upset that tax credits for electric vehicles were stripped from the bill, Musk shared a video snippet of Trump speaking during a March promotional event for Tesla at the White House. “I ended the EV mandate. He never even complained to me,” Trump said at the time, referring to Musk. “Remember this?” Musk wrote in a post that shared the clip and tagged Trump’s account on X.
On X, Elon Musk continued his war of words against Trump by digging up old posts from the president criticizing past federal budgets. “I couldn’t agree more,” Musk wrote as a caption for a 2012 post from Trump that reads, “deficits not allowed!”
Musk later doubled down on this post. “Where is the man who wrote these words? Was he replaced by a body double!?” he wrote on X. Body doubling conspiracies, which suggest a politician has been replaced by a look-alike, have grown common in online political discourse over the past few years. Social media users have floated similar outlandish conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton and Melania Trump. President Trump has also engaged with similar claims in the past, re-sharing a post on Truth Social on Saturday that suggested former President Joseph R. Biden had been replaced by a body double.
With the Musk-Trump fight now public, this administration has one more feature of the last one — a caustic and visible bustup between the president and a top adviser. For the most part, Trump has avoided that this term.
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Elon Musk has a history of posting first and dealing with the repercussions later. On social media, he has accused someone of being a “pedo guy” without evidence and claimed that he had the funding to take Tesla private when he did not.
The stock price of Tesla has been nose-diving today as Elon Musk and President Trump go at each other. The stock is now down about 8 percent as of midday, with the decline timed to when Trump’s comments began.
It doesn’t appear that Musk posts about Trump were planned. He appeared to be digesting Trump’s press conference via videos and posts on X and reacting in almost in real-time to the president’s comments.
Elon Musk trained his fire directly at President Trump after several days of mostly criticizing Republicans in Congress. He accused Trump on X of “ingratitude” and said, “Without me, Trump would have lost the election.”
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Elon Musk responded in real time to Trump on X. He reposted a video of Trump saying Musk “knew the inner workings of the bill better than anybody sitting here.”
“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.
Trump said Musk missed the Oval Office and compared him to other former aides who became hostile after they departed his administration.
While meeting with Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, President Trump suggests that Elon Musk opposed his domestic policy bill for self-interested reasons rather than Musk’s stated reason that the bill blows out the deficit and cancels out the savings Musk achieved through his cuts. Trump says that Musk was upset that the bill got rid of subsidies for electric vehicles. Trump then minimized Musk’s role in helping him during the election, saying he would have won Pennsylvania without Musk.
Trump, after avoiding any criticism of Elon Musk, admits he is disappointed in him amid Musk’s repeated criticism of his tax legislation.
“I’m very disappointed in Elon,” he said. “I’ve helped Elon a lot.”
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Trump was asked about Elon Musk during his meeting with the Germany’s new chancellor and talks about their relationship in the past tense. “Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore.”
