President Donald Trump threatened Elon Musk’s federal contract on Thursday. This threatened to be a surprising escalation of a public feud between the president and his former allies, the wealthiest man in the world.
“The easiest way to save money on budgets, billions, billions of dollars is to end Elon’s government subsidies and contracts,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Thursday afternoon. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do that!”
Musk’s relationship has been getting worse rapidly since leaving the White House last week. The denunciation was made public when Musk publicly denounced Trump’s sweeping domestic policy package on Tuesday.
He has since launched at the White House. Musk baited Trump by name earlier on Thursday, and Trump responded later that day by chastising Tesla’s CEO.
Still, Trump’s criticism from the White House — two men shared Musk’s praise postponement a week ago — was less pointed out than President Barb on social media.
“Without me, Trump would lose the election, Dems would take control of the House and Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote Thursday. “That kind of content.”
Musk businesses have great ties with the federal government, even before the Trump administration. SpaceX is one of NASA’s biggest contractors. And his automotive company Tesla has benefited from the clean energy subsidy in the chopping block of the Republican settlement package.
“Elon ‘wears thin,’ I asked him to leave, I removed his EV delegation. He made everyone buy an electric car that no one else wanted (he knew for months I was trying to do it!), and he just got hooked! ” Trump posted.
“This obvious lie. It’s so sad,” Musk fought back.
Trump has previously supported Tesla due to his close ties with Musk. In March, after public outrage over employment, which was spurred by Musk’s Doge initiative, the company’s stocks were low, and the president toured different Tesla models at a makeshift car show on the White House lawn. Trump later bought his own Tesla. I bought a mask’s “Show of Confidence and Support.”
Trump has routinely used the power of the administrative department against agencies he thinks is malfunctioning. He has been frozen with federal grants to some of the country’s top universities, Harvard Chiefs, as punishment for alleged anti-Semitism and civil rights violations. And he has secured a multi-million dollar deal with his threatened law firm to make their business fight.
