It’s over. The bromance between Elon Musk and Donald Trump has ended and the world was watching in real time as the relationship fell apart.
Not only has the partnership come to a bitter conclusion, the two men who worked so closely together to shape the unique character and outlook of the Trump 2.0 administration have become fierce rivals.
Musk and Trump are now locked in an ugly public feud which threatens to divide the MAGA support base.
This isn’t just the end of a friendship. It’s the beginning of a new political contest – and the risks to Trump are real.
The world’s richest man is using his social media platform to try to convince conservative Americans and MAGA voters that Trump is betraying them.
Musk has the money and the resources to make life difficult for the US President. And he has already threatened the re-election of Republicans on Capitol Hill.
The source of the row is the Big Beautiful Bill – Trump’s legislative centrepiece – which Musk warns will drag the country ever closer to a damaging sovereign debt crisis and punish families and businesses alike.
Trump denies the claim, arguing that his sweeping tariffs will deliver a “tremendous surplus” for the country.
The problem is, none of the forecasters agree, with the Congressional Budget Office saying the Big Beautiful Bill will blow out the deficit by $2.4 trillion over the decade.
The US President appeared genuinely sad and sombre in his Oval Office press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz when addressing the rift with Musk – almost as if he didn’t know what had happened.
He suggested Musk’s savage critiques of the Big Beautiful Bill were motivated by self-interest, because his legislation would remove subsidies for electric vehicles. Trump claimed Musk knew the contents of the Big Beautiful Bill “better than almost anybody”.
“He only developed the problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate – because that’s billions and billions of dollars,” the President said. “I’m very disappointed in him. I’ve helped him out a lot.”
Yet Musk was watching the press conference live and was posting his responses in real time, denying the claims and arguing the substance of the Big Beautiful Bill was deliberately kept secret by the White House.
“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!” he tweeted.
Not even those in Congress who had to vote on the Big Ugly Spending Bill had time to read it! https://t.co/mBOQyhQYwX
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
There is no doubt Musk took the comments from Trump as a grievous betrayal – after all, he had donated $250m towards the Trump campaign in 2024.
Musk believes he is the power behind the throne. The question is how he uses this power next.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” he tweeted. “Such ingratitude.”
In case anyone missed the point, Musk made clear he was ideologically severing ties with the Republicans and with Trump himself.
“Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80 per cent in the middle?” he asked.
He repeatedly posted historical comments from Trump railing against out-of-control deficits and demanding that members of congress should not be re-elected if the budget was not balanced.
“Where is the man who wrote these words? Was he replaced by a body double!?” Mr Musk tweeted.
Not to be outdone, Trump later posted on his own Truth Social platform that Musk was “wearing thin” and that he had “asked him (Musk) 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 posted.
The ending of a political partnership – like in any relationship – can be an ugly and messy affair. But this is more than that.
It is the start of a new political struggle over the economic future of the US and the management of the country’s finances.
The key question is: who will win the argument?
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