Kara Swisher warned President Trump that his Elon Musk problem could get “worse and worse” after the tech billionaire dramatically turned on Trump’s flagship bill.
The veteran tech journalist, who previously predicted that Musk and Trump’s partnership would end in tears, issued her new warning as Musk trashed Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” as a “disgusting abomination” in a stunning scorched-earth posting spree on Tuesday.
Musk, who spent almost $300 million bankrolling Trump’s election campaign, launched his attack on Trump’s signature bill just days after stepping back from his role with the administration’s cost-cutting task force, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
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“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote on X. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” he added, later decrying that the bill would “massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”
Discussing Musk’s meltdown on CNN, Anderson Cooper asked podcaster Swisher about her November prediction that Trump and Musk’s alliance would fall apart because Trump wouldn’t like Musk stealing his limelight. At the time, she said: “One of my favorite movies is Highlander, and ‘there can be only one,’ and that’s going to be Donald Trump.”
“Is that where we are tonight?” Cooper asked Swisher on Tuesday, “Or do you think this is just kind of a baby step?”
“It’s clear that this is where he’s headed,” Swisher answered. “And, you know, what’s interesting is, ‘disgusting abomination’ is a big word. He knows big words—but he actually knows math.”
“And I think this is sort of at the heart of what he‘s talking about and actually is making some sense, is this deficit issue is what he was trying to fight at DOGE, presumably,” Swisher continued.
“And so to do this—this bill—is probably an insult to him,” Swisher said. “At the same time, you know, he could get worse and worse.” She added that Trump is now also finding out what it’s like “Elon Musk outside the tent.”
“Which is not a good place for the Trump Administration to be,” Swisher said. “Because he has a huge platform.”
Since his first major broadside against the bill, Musk has kept up his public attacks against it in front of his 220 million followers on X. As well as threatening to “fire all politicians who betrayed the American people” in next year’s midterm elections, Musk has also complained that the bill “defeats all the cost savings achieved by the DOGE team at great personal cost and risk.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shrugged off Musk’s criticism of the bill on Tuesday, saying that Trump “already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill” and would be “sticking to it” anyway.
