Exchange of blows on social media "Such ingratitude" - dispute between Trump and Musk escalates
Donald Trump and Elon Musk have long presented themselves as allies. Now the two are publicly arguing about the new budget law. The tech billionaire speaks of ingratitude, while the US president threatens.
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- Once close political allies Donald Trump and Elon Musk have turned into squabblers, attacking each other on their social media channels.
- The source of the dispute is the US President's new budget law, which Elon Musk strongly criticized.
- While Musk called Trump "ungrateful", the latter threatened to withdraw public contracts.
The heated exchange over Donald Trump's new budget law draws a line under the US President's close relationship with tech billionaire Elon Musk. "Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will have that anymore," Trump told journalists at the White House. Musk hit back a little later via his online platform X: "Without me, Trump would have lost the election." And he added: "Such ingratitude."
Musk had donated more than 250 million dollars to Trump's election campaign. He also personally campaigned for him in the important state of Pennsylvania, among others. Trump has now said that he would have won in Pennsylvania even without Musk - and seems to have provoked the tech billionaire's attack.
"Time to drop the big bomb"
Trump, meanwhile, followed up and threatened the tech billionaire with the cancellation of public contracts. "The easiest way to save billions and billions of dollars in our budget is to cancel Elon's government subsidies and contracts," Trump wrote on his social network. "I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!"
And Musk is clearly not interested in muddying the waters either, writing on his X platform: "It's time to drop the big bombshell: Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That's the real reason they haven't been released." Nevertheless, it has been known for some time that Trump appears in the files.
Days of attacks by Musk
Musk has been campaigning for days against the tax and spending bill pushed by Trump and calling for more cost-cutting. Meanwhile, Trump has suggested that Musk is driven by business interests. The tech billionaire is, among other things, head of the electric car manufacturer Tesla. Trump said that Musk had no problem with the law - until he learned that it included cutting billions in subsidies for electric vehicles.
The president has kept a low profile in recent days despite Musk's escalating attacks on the law and was first approached by journalists about the controversy during an appointment with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Musk temporarily became a close confidant of Trump, who tasked him with cutting government spending. Musk then withdrew from Washington at the end of May. On his departure, he referred to a 130-day deadline for external government employees.
