When we last left Donald Trump and Elon Musk, it seemed their epic, public falling-out had come to an end. On June 11, the former DOGE chief shared a concise apology post on X, admitting that he “went too far” in some of his attacks on the president (presumably, he was referring to the now-deleted posts that endorsed a call for Trump’s impeachment and claimed Trump is in the Jeffrey Epstein files). Trump took the win with uncharacteristic grace, saying of Musk’s apology tweet, “I thought it was very nice that he did that.”
So life moved on. Trump celebrated his birthday with a military parade, bombed Iran, declared war on Congressman Thomas Massie, and found a new problematic friend at the NATO summit. The Tesla CEO went back to announcing controversial vehicles and X changes. The “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” at the heart of the Trump-Musk feud kept chugging through Congress.
But then Musk decided to revive his campaign against the bill, which Republicans hope to have on Trump’s desk by the end of the week. He slammed the bill in a series of X posts on Saturday, calling it “incredibly destructive,” “utterly insane,” and “political suicide for the Republican Party.”
Hours later, Republicans narrowly voted to advance the megabill. The two defectors, senators Rand Paul and Thom Tillis, did not cite Musk’s new round of complaints as a major factor in their decision.
Musk continued attacking the bill during Monday’s Senate “vote-a-rama,” one of the last hurdles before the final vote:
Before getting on Marine One on Tuesday, Trump responded to a question from a Daily Mail reporter on whether or not he would deport Musk. “I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll have to take a look. We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon.”
Even if it was the usual reality-promo, watch-to-find-out answer, it was a much different tone than his interview on Sunday on Fox News, when he called Musk a “wonderful guy” who is “going to do well always.” Trump seemed almost sympathetic to Musk about his blowup surrounding the megabill’s cuts to the Biden administration’s electric-vehicle tax credits: “At the end, he got a little bit upset, and that wasn’t appropriate.”
Trump downplaying his former friend suggesting he’s covering up his involvement with a notorious pedophile as merely not “appropriate” seemed like a sure sign that he really doesn’t want to reignite their feud. But getting DOGE to potentially cut Musk’s lucrative government contracts would be a sure way to keep it going.
More on Politics
- Poll Shows Public Knows Little About Trump’s Ugly Megabill
- Trump Betrayed His Base With the Big Beautiful Bill, and the GOP Will Regret It
- No President Has Ever Had Something Like Trump’s Megabill
