Donald Trump broke his silence over Elon Musk on Thursday in a dramatic intervention after the Tesla billionaire’s frenzied attacks on the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
The president abruptly declared their bromance is all but over and suggested the former first buddy has “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
In a scorched earth tirade in the Oval Office, Trump suggested that the Tesla boss was bitter because his “big beautiful bill” scrapped clean energy credits - which would impact Musk’s electric vehicle business - and also because the president withdrew the NASA nomination of a Musk ally.
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“Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump said.
“I’m very disappointed with Elon. I’ve helped him a lot. He knew the inner workings of the bill better than anybody sitting here. He had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem and he only developed the problem when he found out we’re going to cut the EV [Electric Vehicle] mandate.”
Musk responded in real time, declaring on X: “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 later added: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”
“Such ingratitude.”
Trump’s Oval Office rampage marks the end of the alliance between the world’s richest man and its most powerful president, merely months after Musk spent almost $300 million to get Trump re-elected.
The brutal rebuke came after Musk delivered a blistering critique of Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill on Tuesday, describing it as a “disgusting abomination” and condemning everyone who voted for it.
The former DOGE boss ramped up his attack against the bill on Wednesday, telling his 220 million-plus followers on X: “Call your Senator, Call your Congressman, Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL.”
This came after the Congressional Budget Office found that the Trump-backed bill would add $2.4 trillion to federal budget deficits over 10 years.
A few hours later, he called out Trump by name for the first time, re-posting a meme with a large yellow tractor that said “Trump’s big beautiful bill.”
In another sucker punch on Thursday, Trump also told reporters that he believes he could have won in Pennsylvania - the swing state that clinched his victory - even if Musk hadn’t helped.
He then suggested that Musk had turned on him after he ended his official DOGE duties on Friday.
“People leave my administration, and they love us, and then at some point … some of them actually become hostile. I don’t know what it is. It’s sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it," Trump said.
“They leave it and the glamour is gone, and the whole world is is different, and they become hostile. I don’t know what it is.”
Musk fired back on X: “Whatever.”
Musk’s anger over the bill this week came after a tumultuous few months in which Musk upended the federal bureaucracy, watched his Tesla stocks plummet amid a public backlash and ultimately failed to deliver the $1 trillion in savings he claimed DOGE would achieve.
Trump had earlier praised him for his role during a joint press conference on Friday, even giving Musk a gold key - symbolic of a key to the White House.
“I’ll continue to be visiting here and be a friend and adviser to the president,” Musk said, wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with the words “The Dogefather.”
“I hope so,” said Trump.
