Elon Musk is torching the president’s massive new spending bill as payback for getting booted from the Trump administration, according to conservative commentator Bill Kristol.
On his way out of the Trump administration, the scorned billionaire first offered a muted critique of the bill, saying last week that he was “disappointed” with it and that it undermines the work of his DOGE team—canceling out its savings, whatever the final figure actually was.
Musk has since gone scorched earth, slamming the legislative package as “outrageous,” “pork-filled” and a “disgusting abomination.”
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“Mammoth spending bills are bankrupting America!” he posted on X late Wednesday, sharing a graphic depicting rising national debt over the past three decades. “ENOUGH,” he added.
Kristol, a longtime political analyst and now editor at large at The Bulwark, suggested Musk didn’t walk—he was shown the door, hence the meltdown. The conservative commentator has often decried the values of the Republican Party since its MAGA makeover.
Speaking on MSNBC’s The Beat With Ari Melber on Wednesday, Kristol implied the Tesla CEO was fired.
“I guess people knew Trump and especially knew Musk. I mean, I’m struck that people who knew Musk sort of thought this would happen,” Kristol, who served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle under President George H.W. Bush, said.
“You know, I don’t—God knows I don’t put myself in Elon Musk’s mind. That’s a bridge too far, even for people like us who are supposed to comment on this. But I don’t know, don’t you think his reaction suggests Trump fired him?“ Kristol asked the host.
“This talk about—you mentioned a breakup. True enough, he was going to go back to his business, he had only 120 days and all that nonsense. He wanted to stay. He loved it there. And I think Trump just said at some point, ‘No, sorry. Goodbye.’”
Trump hasn’t directly acknowledged Musk’s outbursts yet. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt brushed off Musk’s criticism when asked about it at a Tuesday press conference.
She said the president “already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” adding that Trump was “sticking to it” regardless.
Musk’s tenure as a “special government employee” ran out on Friday. He had already indicated weeks earlier that he would step back from government work to focus on his companies amid a significant slump in Tesla sales.
But Kristol suggested that Trump might have even “got sick of” Musk.
“Trump could have could have kept him along, just, you know, gradually reducing his role and trying to sort of smooth it off. A: Maybe Trump just got sick of him. B: Maybe Trump knows something that’s going to come out or stuff that was, you know, that’s lurking in DOGE world that we’re about to learn more about, because the courts are looking at some of this,” Kristol, co-founder of the anti-MAGA nonprofit Defending Democracy Together, said said.
Kristol suggested the lack of overtures from Trump toward Musk after his departure points to an acrimonious ending.
“He could have said, ‘You know what, Elon’s leaving full time, but I’m going to want to have him back here at least once a week for meetings. He’ll be on the phone a lot because he’s been so invaluable.’ You didn’t hear a lot of that,” he said.
Kristol added that “the attack on the bill is entirely an attack on Trump.”
