Public dusting: Musk against Trump: former alliance ends in mud battle

The world’s richest man against the President of the most powerful country: The monthly alliance of Elon Musk and Donald Trump ends in a publicly held sludge battle. The tech billionaire even went so far to dispose of the leadership role in the Republican Party. The US President, in turn, threatened to withdraw Musk companies with government orders-whereupon the tech billionaire countered that he was being withheld from the U.S. dream agency NASA’s currently indispensable dragon-room capsules of his SpaceX company.

The dispute between Musk and Trump flared up around the tax and budget law driven by the President. Musk, who, on behalf of Trump, was to take care of a radical reduction in government spending until recently, demands far stronger expenses. In the past few days, after his retreat from Washington, he tightened the attacks to the law – and thus also to Trump’s government.

Trump was publicly addressed for the first time at the appointment with Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) in the White House. The 78-year-old indicated that musk was led by business interests. The busy entrepreneur is, among other things, the head of the electric car manufacturer Tesla. Trump said Musk had no problem with the law – until he found out that a reduction in billions of billions of subsidies for electric vehicles added. Musk called that a lie.

Musk: Trump only stays president for three and a half years

The 53-year-old owner of the extensive online platform X suggested congress members of the Republican Party to join his side when voting on the law. “Trump still has three and a half years as President – and there will be more than 40 years,” he wrote as a “food for thought” for the parliamentarians on X, where he put a real cascade on posts within a few hours.

It may seem questionable that musk, as a matter of course, estimates a life expectancy of more than 90 years – but for congress members, his words are not simply an empty threat. With an estimated assets of more than $ 300 billion, Musk is by far the richest person in the world. Last year he put over $ 250 million in Trump’s election campaign, although he was previously considered a supporter of the Democrats. And with his monster, he could easily finance challengers who dispute the unpleasant MPs in the House of Representatives or Senate.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the choice”

Musk also made an election campaign for Trump, among other things, in the important state of Pennsylvania. Trump now said that he had easily won in Pennsylvania – and seems to have also applied the tech billionaire against himself. “Without me, Trump would have lost the choice,” Musk said at X. “Such an ungratefulness.”

After that, Musk took a sensational accusation that he initiated with the sentence “It is time to throw really big bomb”: He claimed that Trump’s name can be found in documents for the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “That is the real reason why they were not published,” he wrote – and then wished Trump a “nice day”.

Epstein died in a New York prison cell in 2019. Vice-FBI director Dan Bongino recently confirmed that the well-networked financier in the American high society had committed suicide. Trump’s Ministry of Justice disclosed some Epstein documents in February.

Musk did not give any evidence of his claim – and there is no reason why he should have access to the documents. However, during his time as a listed government advisor in Washington, he intergers many things that exceeded his actual area of ​​responsibility. The president initially did not comment on Causa Epstein. Trump confidante told the news channel CNN, but they did not believe that the relationship between the two could recover from this attack Musk.

Tesla share sags after Trump threats

The tech billionaire also spread a contribution to X with a narrow “yes”, in which the author wrote that Trump had to be removed from the office. Trump, in turn, threatened financial consequences for Musk companies. “The easiest way to save billions and billions of dollars in our household is to terminate Elon’s government subsidies and contracts,” wrote the President at the online platform Truth Social. He had always been surprised that his predecessor Joe Biden didn’t do that. Many Tesla investors reacted panicked, the carmaker’s share lost more than 14 percent to the US trade.

In return, Musk announced that his space company SpaceX would start immediately taking the Dragon space capsule out of operation. Later he seemed to take this back with another post on X – however, it was not clear how serious Musk means.

The Dragon room capsules are currently practically indispensable for the USA to bring astronauts into space. Boeing developed the spaceship Starliner, but the first flight with people on board the crew had to remain on board the ISS space station because there were technical problems. The astronauts stuck on the ISS for months before returning with a SpaceX capsule.

Demonstrative harmony becomes a bitter dispute

For the first time, Trump also claimed that he asked Musk to withdraw from Washington. So far, both had referred to a rule that external government employees may only be employed 130 days a year. There had been no talk of differences, and there was a communication on the outside – until now.

In the past few months, Trump and Musk demonstratively have shown their harmony, so that the heavily rich company boss was often referred to as the “First Buddy” of the President. They showed themselves together at a SpaceX rocket start and a wrestling tournament. Musk was allowed to take out extraordinary freedom and, for example, let his son X romp around at a media appointment in the Oval Office.

When the sales figures from Tesla collapsed, among other things, because of Musk’s right -wing political views, Trump had a car column opened in front of the White House and demonstratively bought one of the electric vehicles. “I love Tesla!” Trump called into the TV cameras. Meanwhile, Musk wrote in February that he love Trump “as much as a hetero man can love another”.

However, speculation has been speculated since the beginning of the alliance that the fraternization between Trump and Musk, which is often mockingly referred to as “Bromance”, was a pure alliance. If only because of its pronounced ego, the alliance could not last forever.