Donald Trump said he will examine whether he can deport Elon Musk as the feud between the pair reignites.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Tuesday morning, Trump was asked about his spat with Musk as Congress negotiates the president’s “big, beautiful” bill, which the tech billionaire opposes.
When asked about whether he could remove Musk from the U.S., the president replied: “I don‘t know, we’ll have to take a look.”
Trump also threatened that he might have to task the so-called Department of Government Efficiency with investigating Musk to help save the government from paying subsidies to the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s companies.
“DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon,” Trump said. “Wouldn’t that be terrible?”
“He gets a lot of subsidies, but Elon is very upset that the EV mandate is going to be terminated,” Trump added.
In response to a clip of Trump’s remarks about deportation, Musk wrote on X: “So tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting. But I will refrain for now.”
Musk and Trump had a very public falling out over Trump’s megabill last month. The feud erupted after Trump suggested Musk had gone “crazy” over plans to remove the Biden-era electric vehicle mandate, and escalated when Musk claimed that the president‘s name appears in the so-called “Epstein files.”
As negotiations on Trump’s megabill continue in the Senate, Musk has been ramping up his attacks on the legislation, sharing estimates that the federal spending bill would increase the country’s deficit by $3.3 trillion. Musk has also vowed to help form a third political party, the America Party, if Trump’s spending bill gets passed.
Musk also threatened that lawmakers who vote in support of the megabill “will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”
In a late-night post on Truth Social, Trump claimed that without U.S. subsidies, Musk would “probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa.”
Musk was born in South Africa in 1971 and became a U.S. citizen in 2002.
In a typically rambling style, Trump explained to reporters outside the White House why he wants to get rid of the EV mandate, which has the potential to seriously affect Musk’s Tesla company in the U.S.
“Not everybody wants an electric car. I don’t want an electric car. I want to have maybe gasoline, maybe electric, maybe a hybrid, maybe someday a hydrogen. If you have a hydrogen car, it has one problem, if it blows up,” he said. “When they blow up, it’s serious, they find you five blocks away.”
