Musk And Trump Take Slap Fight Public As Bromance Ends

Fire up those popcorn makers. The bromance between tech mogul Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump has come to an ignominious end as the billionaires feud on their respective social media platforms.

The messy interpersonal drama of attention-crazed public figures isn’t the usual El Reg fodder, but these two definitely merit some attention. Aside from being a juicy bit of Friday schadenfreude, the world’s richest person and his digifeud with the world’s most powerful threaten the future of the US space program (and thus US national defense), the American electric vehicle market, and could even rise to the level of a straight-up national security nightmare. 

Slap-fight timeline

The bromance began back in 2024 when Musk donated more than $270 million to elect Trump and other Republicans following his increasingly public dissatisfaction with then-President Joe Biden’s tax, regulatory, and social agenda. After his victory, Trump through an executive order created a so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut waste from government agencies, and put Musk informally in charge.

However, DOGE failed to deliver on Musk’s original promises of cutting $2 trillion in government waste. The group’s tactics – such as asking government employees to send bullet-pointed emails to their bosses telling them what they accomplished, and sending teams of inexperienced youngsters into government software systems – were widely seen as ham-handed and possibly illegal, with some actions being challenged in court. In April, Musk announced he was stepping back to spend more time with his companies including SpaceX and Tesla. All was quiet – for a month or so.

The new fight appears to have kicked off with Musk’s criticism of Trump’s budget reconciliation proposal – the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” – earlier this week. Musk came out swinging against the bill on Tuesday, calling it a “pork-filled … abomination” and shaming elected officials in the House who voted for it – though we should also note the screed came after the Trump administration withdrew the nomination of Jared Isaacman to head NASA. Isaacman, who has close ties to Musk, suggested that backlash over his association with the SpaceX boss may have played a role in the decision to withdraw his nomination.

Musk’s criticism spurred a defensive response from Trump, who told reporters on Thursday that he didn’t know whether his relationship with Musk would be as good as it once was following the centibillionaire’s attacks on the bill. 

Musk retorted by claiming on X that Trump would have lost the election and handed control of the House to Democrats without his help. “Such ingratitude,” Musk said. Musk also fat-shamed Trump’s bill and predicted that Trump’s tariffs would push the US into a recession in the second half of 2025.

Trump, not one to take such insults with grace and humility, said Musk was “wearing thin,” and that he only went crazy when Trump proposed eliminating EV tax breaks – something Musk has both blasted and backed, depending on the political weather and Tesla’s bottom line. The President also suggested that DOGE’s work would have been easier to accomplish had the group simply gone after Musk’s own government contracts, which he seemed to imply were a waste of federal funds in a post on his Truth Social website.

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump said. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

That led to more decidedly indirect exchanges between the pair, including threats from Musk to immediately decommission SpaceX’s fleet of Dragon spacecraft, which have become a critical part of America’s space infrastructure. Musk backed down from the snap decision after a random X user told him he should take some time to cool off. 

If there were ever a case to be made for not putting critical infrastructure in the private hands of mercurial billionaires, this could be exhibit number one. 

Feud costs Trump, Musk bigly

Shares of Musk’s only publicly traded company, Tesla, plummeted more than 14% yesterday during his online feud with Trump, whose own publicly traded Trump Media and Technology Group showed a similar trajectory to Tesla throughout the day. 

A chart showing the price of TSLA and DJT yesterday, June 5, during Musk and Trump’s online spat – click to enlarge

Earlier Friday, reports suggested Musk and Trump were planning a call to resolve their feud. Shares in both companies rebounded modestly following this news.

It may take more than a phone call to make Tesla investors happy again. The electric vehicle pioneer has been the worst performing large-cap stock in the world so far in 2025. Musk’s courting of far-right figures, dabbling in politics with the Trump administration and German extremists, and now his feud – which erased $150 billion in market value yesterday alone – has contributed to Tesla shares losing more than 20 percent of their value this year. 

That early Friday share rally for Musk may not continue, either. As we were writing this article, CNN reported that Trump told it during a phone call that he wasn’t interested in talking to Musk anytime soon.

“I’m not even thinking about Elon,” Trump told the Cable News Network. “The poor guy’s got a problem.” A senior White House official confirmed to The Register that Trump had no plans to speak to Musk today.

Elon, the feud ball is now in your court. If you’re going to help destabilize a country and ruin a few of your companies in the process, at least make it entertaining. ® 

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