 "The high profile bromance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk finally imploded on June 5. File image/AP")
Breakups are hard. Public breakups are even harder. And who knows this better than Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The world’s richest man and the US president’s bromance has come to an end after 10 long months and the two are now trading personal barbs at each other on X, which is interestingly owned by Trump’s now former ‘First Buddy’.
It all came to a head on Thursday (June 5) when Musk, who just last week left Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), took to his favourite online platform, X, and launched a tirade against the US president and his so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill’. From there it went downwards, with Trump chiming in, saying he was “very disappointed in Musk.”
Soon, it became a duel in which threats of impeachment, cancelling contracts and more were shared.
But how did we get here? How did the partnership between Musk and Trump collapse? And what may come next for the two men often described as the world’s richest and the world’s most powerful, respectively?
Musk-Trump become inseparable political force
It was last July that Musk endorsed Donald Trump as president and soon joined him on campaigns. In fact, Musk spent nearly $200 million to elect Trump to a second term in 2024. Days after his successful election, Trump responded by appointing Musk to lead a newly created government cutting agency, called the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).
Soon, Musk was everywhere Trump was — in meetings, on Air Force One and everywhere else. Musk became one of the most prominent figures in the Trump administration. Simultaneously, Musk also became a lightning rod for criticism, courtesy of his work at Doge — he laid off more than 10,000 people from federal jobs, and gutted various agencies, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
However, the two stuck together, supporting one another, despite the criticism. The US president even heaped huge praise on Musk during his joint address to Congress in early March. “Thank you, Elon. You’re working very hard,” Trump said at the time. “He didn’t need this. He didn’t need this. We appreciate it,” the president added, then gestured to the Democratic side of the chamber: “Everybody here, even this side, appreciates it, I believe. They just don’t want to admit that.”
Few days after that, US President Trump turned into a brand ambassador for Musk’s Tesla for a day when the former hosted a showcase of the Teslas on the White House lawn. “I just want people to know that you can’t be penalised for being a patriot,” Trump told reporters during a photo-op with Musk and his vehicles. The president further added that he had bought one of the vehicles himself.
Then on May 31, came the big moment — Musk was leaving Doge after being at the heart of the Trump administration for 138 days. Trump then presented Musk with a large golden key emblazoned with the White House insignia, which he said he only gave to “very special people” as a thank-you from the country.
Unravelling of the bromance
But as they say in politics — there are no permanent enemies or permanent allies, only permanent interests.
The rupture in the Musk-Trump relationship could first be seen over the US president’s signature bill. In a CBS interview just days before he departed the Trump administration, Musk said, “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.”
These comments were mild compared to what came next. On June 3, shortly after he left the White House, the world’s richest man issued a flurry of posts on X, attacking the One Big Beautiful Bill Act . “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. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
He further claimed the bill would “massively increase” the federal budget deficit. But that wasn’t it. A day later, the Tesla boss once again attacked the bill with a series of posts on social media, instructing followers to call members of Congress to ‘KILL THE BILL.’
Clash of the Titans
And then came the big moment — when the gloves came off and the two really got into it. On Thursday, began with Trump saying he was “disappointed” with Musk’s criticisms of the spending bill, musing that it may be the end of their “great relationship”.
Trump even added, “Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than anyone… and he only developed a problem when he found out I would cut the EV (electric vehicle) mandate… And it really is unfair,” he replied.
The US president took it further claiming that during the presidential election he could have won the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania without Musk’s help.
Musk responded in real time on X. He wrote that “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!”
The world’s richest man then accused the US president of “ingratitude”, adding: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election”.
But it seemed that Trump was following Musk online and immediately hit back — “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!” Trump wrote in a social media post.
The back and forth continued with Elon Musk calling for Donald Trump’s impeachment and mocking his connections to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein . The world’s richest man wrote, “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!”
In turn, Trump said that if lawmakers wanted to really save money, they should “terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts” on X. When a user claimed Trump’s idea would mean effectively abandoning the International Space Station, Musk promoted the post and dared Trump. “Go ahead, make my day,” he wrote on X.
Little hope of a recoupling
It remains to be seen where things go from here. If the past is any indicator, then Trump often reconciles with allies even after ugly spats. But none of them have been with someone as high-profile as Musk.
And Musk, it seems, is in no mood for a reconciliation. Musk polled his followers on X, asking, “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80 per cent in the middle?”
What comes next, we don’t know. There are many questions that need answers, but the one that’s got us most curious is — Will Musk send back his key to the White House?
With inputs from agencies