The Musk-Trump War of Words is Heating Up (Update: Musk Drops 'Really Big Bomb')

John Sexton 3:20 PM | June 05, 2025
AP Photo/Evan Vucci

As you've probably noticed already, Elon Musk revealed this week that he is not a fan of the Big, Beautiful Bill. In fact he's been tweeting about it constantly for the last couple days.

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I'm skipping a bunch...

Elon also strated retweeting some of his interviews from earlier this year when he was making the case that DOGE was necessary to ensure America did not go bankrupt.

There are still a lot of conservatives in agreement with him on this point.

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He's calling on people to pressure congress to kill the bill.

Grok sides with the CBO estimate.

He also retweeted this:

He also retweeted this old Remy clip from 2013:

This meme puts his work at DOGE in perspective.

He has been making this case all along.

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He RT'd this clip of Sen. Kennedy agreeing with him.

He also dug up an old Trump tweet from 2012:

As for the cuts to EV incentives, he says he's fine with that so long as the bill is put on a diet.

Anyway, after all that it's probably not surprising that President Trump is being asked about it and is suggesting that maybe he and Elon aren't friends anymore. Trump is also claiming that Elon "knew the inner-workings of this bill" long before now.

But Musk says that's not the case. No one showed him this.

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I think this is Musk's response to Trump saying "I've helped Elon a lot." That cuts both ways.

Musk RT'd some reporting from OAN suggesting his tweets have reset the conversation in the Senate. They may not have the votes for the current version of the bill.

Here's Musk's pinned tweet at the moment. You can click on the embedded tweet and bring up the image but basically it's a collection of Donald Trump tweets demanding a balanced budget. "Where is this guy today??"

Musk risked his companies and potentially much more to run DOGE and try to save money and make the government more efficient. He became public enemy #1 for months to save less than $200 billion in spending. Now this bill threatens to add billions more to the debt, at least according to the CBO score of the House bill.

About the CBO score, you can certainly make the argument that conservatives and maybe most Americans want the Trump tax cuts to be extended. That's probably true. But the fact remains that extending the tax cuts does raise the deficit over the next decade compared to letting the cuts expire under current law. Why? Because the government is going to bring in less tax revenue if the cuts are extended. Over ten years the difference could be as much as $4.5 trillion. That's great news for taxpayers (who aren't being forced to pay all of that), but the federal budget still has to be balanced. If it's not from higher taxes then it has to be from lower spending. 

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It's worth noting that the CBO is going to score the BBB again looking for the impact of potential growth ("macroeconomic effects") on these numbers, so they could still improve. But as it stands the BBB cuts only partially offset the cost of extending the tax cuts. That's certainly better than nothing, but it still leaves us with debt going up rather than down over the budget window. Can we do better?

If the result of this BBB is that the debt is higher a decade from now then Musk's efforts at DOGE seem to be in vain. No wonder he's upset.

Update: Well, that escalated quickly.

I don't think it's true that Musk is doing this over subsidies. He said months ago that cutting subsidies might hurt Tesla but would hurt other EV manufacturers a lot more. If there's an angle here it's not that. And then Musk drops the big one.

Hard to see them patching this up now. Democrats are loving this:

New fronts are opening in this war.

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Pretty funny. This is now the new cycle for today. Everything else is...not this.

Oh noooo....

Trump is still making threats.

President Trump threatened to cut billions of dollars in federal contracts and tax subsidies for Elon Musk’s companies on Thursday, the latest escalation in the growing feud between the two men.

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

Last year, Mr. Musk’s companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts with 17 federal agencies. Most of the contracts were for SpaceX, Mr. Musk’s space technology company. Tesla, his electric vehicle company, also has contracts with the federal government.

If the US doesn't contract with Space X, we aren't going back to the moon. That would be a big win for China. And here's Musk's response.

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Dragon has been carrying astronauts to and from the ISS (including the two who got stuck last year). Elon is clearly very angry.

Elie Mystal thinks this is all a set up leading to another loss for Democrats.

So much for Bluesky:

This is going to keep going probably all day. I'll have a new post with more reactions coming up soon.

Tags:

CONGRESS DONALD TRUMP ELON MUSK

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