It's personal: Ugliest things Trump and Musk said about each other

Even though US President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk had been drifting for some time, their relationship unravelled spectacularly on Thursday as the two hurled insults at each other and issued threats.

While Musk threatened to bring the US space programme to a halt with the dismantling of his SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, Trump threatened to kill Musk’s space business by cancelling his government subsidies and contracts.

While the drift came out in the public with differences over the policy bill that Trump is pushing, which Musk called a “disgusting abomination”, it spiralled into a full-blown storm on Thursday with both exchanging sharp words.

Here are some of the nastiest things that they have said in their feud so far.

• “Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!” — Elon Musk

• “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude.” — Elon Musk

• “Elon’s upset because we took the [electric vehicle] mandate and – you know, which was a lot of money for electric vehicles. He only developed a problem when he found out I would cut the EV mandate.” — Donald Trump

• “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!” — Donald Trump

• “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!” — Donald Trump

• “Oh and 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.” — Elon Musk

• “The Trump tariffs will cause a recession in the second half of this year.” — Elon Musk