From bromance to brickbats: Timeline of the Trump-Musk breakup
US President Donald Trump on Thursday (Jun 6) threatened to cut off government contracts with Elon Musk's companies, as the once-close relationship between the world's most powerful man and its richest unravelled publicly on their rival social media platforms.
Trump said in a televised Oval Office diatribe that he was "very disappointed" after his former aide and top donor criticised his "big, beautiful" spending Bill before Congress.
The pair then hurled insults at each other on social media – with Musk even posting, without proof, that Trump was referenced in government documents on disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The row could have major political and economic fallout, as shares in Musk's Tesla car company plunged and the South African-born tech tycoon vowed that he would end a critical US spaceship program.
Speculation had long swirled that a relationship between the world's richest person and its most powerful could not last long – but the speed of the meltdown took Washington by surprise.
MAY 22
House Republicans on May 22, took a major step forward on President Donald Trump's agenda, approving a legislative package that combines tax breaks, spending cuts, border security funding and other priorities.
House committees laboured for months on the Bill, which underwent late changes to win over holdouts in the Republican conference. It exceeds 1,000 pages and is titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a nod to Trump himself.
Republicans made one last round of revisions before the Bill reached the House floor, boosting the state and local tax deduction to win over centrists and speeding up the work requirements in Medicaid to win over those who did not believe the Bill did enough to curb spending.
The One Big, Beautiful Bill Act - which has now moved to the Senate - would usher into law Trump's vision for a new "Golden Age", led by efforts to shrink social safety net programmes to pay for a 10-year extension of his 2017 tax cuts.
MAY 28
Musk, in an interview with CBS News, criticised the Bill - but in relatively tame language.
"I was disappointed to see the massive spending Bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing," Musk said
"I think a Bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion," Musk added.
In a separate interview with the Washington Post, Musk said: "The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realised."
"I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least."
JUN 3
Less than a week later, the gloves came off and the tone became significantly more confrontational.
"I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending Bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it," Musk wrote on his X platform.
"It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to US$2.5 trillion and burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt."
Musk also posted on X: "In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people," referring to the Senate elections which are scheduled to be held on Nov 3, 2026.
JUN 4
On Wednesday, Musk made several posts on X about the Bill, writing that "a new spending Bill should be drafted that doesn't massively grow the deficit and increase the debt ceiling by 5 trillion dollars".
In another post later in the day, he wrote: "Call your Senator, Call your Congressmen, Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL."
He also called the spending Bill the "Debt Slavery Bill", as, according to him, the Bill contains the largest increase in the debt ceiling in US history.
JUN 5, 12PM EASTERN TIME (JUN 6, 12AM, SINGAPORE TIME)
Trump, after he met with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, addressed Musk's criticisms and added that he anticipated Musk criticising him personally.
'Elon is upset because we took the EV mandate, and you know, which was a lot of money for electric vehicles,' Trump said in the Oval Office.
'They're having a hard time - the electric vehicles - and they want us to pay billions of dollars in subsidies. And, you know, Elon knew this from the beginning.'
"Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will anymore," he added.
"He said the most beautiful things about me, and he hasn't said bad about me personally, but I'm sure that'll be next. But I'm, I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot."
He went on to say Musk knew the inner workings of the Bill.
JUN 5, 12.10PM
On Wednesday, Musk posted on X: "Slim Beautiful Bill for the win".
Musk then replied to this post on X at 12.13PM, writing: "Keep the good, remove the bad."
Musk appeared to respond in real time to Trump's claims from the Oval Office about the EV mandate.
"Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the Bill, even though no oil& gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the mountain of disgusting pork in the Bill," he said.
"In the entire history of civilisation, there has never been legislation that is both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this!
"Either you get a big and ugly Bill or a slim and beautiful Bill. Slim and beautiful is the way."
JUN 5, 12.25PM
Musk then responded to a clip of Trump from the Oval Office that said Musk knew the inner workings of the bill.
"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!" Musk wrote on X.
At 12.44pm, Musk, in a repost of X user Jesse Paltan's post, who compiled a number of Trump's old tweets in a picture, wrote: "Where is this guy today?"
JUN 5, 1.57PM
At 1.57pm, Musk launched a poll on X with the question: "Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80 per cent in the middle?"
The poll is now pinned to his X account. More than four million people have voted.
JUN 5, 2.37PM
Trump hit back on his social media platform, Truth Social: "Elon was 'wearing thin,' I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!"
Trump, in another Truth Social post, also said that he did not mind Musk turning against him, but "he should have done so months ago".
"This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress. It's a Record Cut in Expenses, US$1.6 Trillion Dollars, and the Biggest Tax Cut ever given. If this Bill doesn't pass, there will be a 68 per cent Tax Increase, and things far worse than that," Trump said.
"I didn't create this mess, I'm just here to FIX IT. This puts our Country on a Path of Greatness. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
He added that the easiest way to save "billions and billions of dollars" was to "terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!"
JUN 5, 3.10PM
Musk then alleged that Trump is featured in secret government files on rich and powerful former Epstein associates.
"Time to drop the really big bomb: (Trump) is in the Epstein files," Musk posted on X.
"That is the real reason they have not been made public."
Supporters on the conspiratorial end of Trump's base allege that Epstein's associates had their roles in his crimes covered up by government officials and others.
They point the finger at Democrats and Hollywood celebrities, however, not at Trump himself, and no official source has ever confirmed that the president appears in any of the material.
Musk did not reveal which files he was talking about, and offered no evidence for his claim.
Musk, in a later post, responded to Trump's statements about the cancellation of his government contracts and said that "SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately".
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
14 minutes ago
- Straits Times
Trump gets key wins at Supreme Court on immigration, despite some misgivings
The US Supreme Court most recently let the Trump administration end temporary legal status provided to migrants for humanitarian reasons. PHOTO: REUTERS Trump gets key wins at Supreme Court on immigration, despite some misgivings The US Supreme Court swept away this week another obstacle to one of President Donald Trump's most aggressively pursued policies – mass deportation – again showing its willingness to back his hardline approach to immigration. The justices, though, have signalled some reservations with how he is carrying it out. Since Mr Trump returned to the White House in January, the court already has been called upon to intervene on an emergency basis in seven legal fights over his crackdown on immigration. It most recently let Mr Trump's administration end temporary legal status provided to hundreds of thousands of migrants for humanitarian reasons by his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden while legal challenges in two cases play out in lower courts. The Supreme Court on May 30 lifted a judge's order that had halted the revocation of immigration 'parole' for more than 500,000 Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants. On May 19, it lifted another judge's order preventing the termination of 'temporary protected status' for more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants. In some other cases, however, the justices have ruled that the administration must treat migrants fairly, as required under the US Constitution's guarantee of due process. 'This president has been more aggressive than any in modern US history to quickly remove non-citizens from the country,' said Dr Kevin Johnson, an immigration and public interest law expert at the University of California, Davis. No president in modern history 'has been as willing to deport non-citizens without due process,' he added. That dynamic has forced the Supreme Court to police the contours of the administration's actions, if less so the legality of Mr Trump's underlying policies. The court's 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Mr Trump during his first term as president. 'President Trump is acting within his lawful authority to deport illegal aliens and protect the American people. While the Supreme Court has rightfully acknowledged the president's authority in some cases, in others they have invented new due process rights for illegal aliens that will make America less safe. We are confident in the legality of our actions and will continue fighting to keep President Trump's promises,' White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Reuters. The justices twice – on April 7 and on May 16 – have placed limits on the administration's attempt to implement Mr Trump's invocation of a 1798 law called the Alien Enemies Act, which historically has been employed only in wartime, to swiftly deport Venezuelan migrants who it has accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Lawyers and family members of some of the migrants have disputed the gang membership allegation. On May 16, the justices also said a bid by the administration to deport migrants from a detention centre in Texas failed basic constitutional requirements. Giving migrants 'notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster', the court stated. Due process generally requires the government to provide notice and an opportunity for a hearing before taking certain adverse actions. The court has not outright barred the administration from pursuing these deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, as the justices have yet to decide the legality of using the law for this purpose. The US government last invoked the Alien Enemies Act during World War Two to intern and deport people of Japanese, German and Italian descent. 'The Supreme Court has in several cases reaffirmed some basic principles of constitutional law (including that) the due process clause applies to all people on US soil,' said Professor Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia Law School's immigrants' rights clinic. Even for alleged gang members, she said, the court 'has been extremely clear that they are entitled to notice before they can be summarily deported from the United States'. A wrongly deported man In a separate case, the court on April 10 ordered the administration to facilitate the release from custody in El Salvador of Mr Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who was living in Maryland. The administration has acknowledged that Mr Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported to El Salvador. The administration has yet to return him to the United States, which according to some critics amounts to defiance of the Supreme Court. The administration deported on March 15 more than 200 people to El Salvador, where they were detained in the country's massive anti-terrorism prison under a deal in which the United States is paying President Nayib Bukele's government US$6 million ($7.74 million). Dr Ilya Somin, a constitutional law professor at George Mason University, said the Supreme Court overall has tried to curb the administration's 'more extreme and most blatantly illegal policies' without abandoning its traditional deference to presidential authority on immigration issues. 'I think they have made a solid effort to strike a balance,' said Dr Somin, referring to the Alien Enemies Act and Abrego Garcia cases. 'But I still think there is excessive deference, and a tolerance for things that would not be permitted outside the immigration field.' That deference was on display over the past two weeks with the court's decisions letting Mr Trump terminate the grants of temporary protected status and humanitarian parole previously given to migrants. Such consequential orders were issued without the court offering any reasoning, Prof Mukherjee noted. 'Collectively, those two decisions strip immigration status and legal protections in the United States from more than 800,000 people. And the decisions are devastating for the lives of those who are affected,' she said. 'Those individuals could be subject to deportations, family separation, losing their jobs, and if they're deported, possibly even losing their lives.' Travel ban ruling Mr Trump also pursued restrictive immigration policies in his first term as president, from 2017 to 2021. The Supreme Court gave Mr Trump a major victory in 2018, upholding his travel ban targeting people from several Muslim-majority countries. In 2020, the court blocked Mr Trump's bid to end a programme that protects from deportation hundreds of thousands of migrants – often called 'Dreamers' – who entered the United States illegally as children. Other major immigration-related cases are currently pending before the justices, including Mr Trump's effort to broadly enforce his January executive order to restrict birthright citizenship – a directive at odds with the longstanding interpretation of the Constitution as conferring citizenship on virtually every baby born on US soil. The court heard arguments in that case on May 15 and has not yet rendered a decision. Another case concerns the administration's efforts to increase the practice of deporting migrants to countries other than their own, including to places such as war-torn South Sudan. Boston-based US District Judge Brian Murphy required that migrants destined for so-called 'third countries' be notified and given a meaningful chance to seek legal relief by showing the harms they may face by being sent there. The judge on May 21 ruled that the administration had violated his court order by attempting to deport migrants to South Sudan. They are now being held at a military base in Djibouti. The administration on May 27 asked the justices to lift Judge Murphy's order because it said the third-country process is needed to remove migrants who commit crimes because their countries of origin are often unwilling to take them back. Dr Johnson predicted that the Supreme Court will side with the migrants in this dispute. 'I think that the court will enforce the due process rights of a non-citizen before removal to a third country,' he said. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
14 minutes ago
- Straits Times
Mistakenly deported man Abrego Garcia returns to US to face migrant transport charges
Mr Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who lived in the US legally with a work permit, was erroneously deported to El Salvador. PHOTO: REUTERS WASHINGTON - Mr Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported from Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration, has returned to the United States to face criminal charges of transporting illegal immigrants within the US, Attorney-General Pam Bondi said on June 6. Mr Abrego Garcia's case has become a flash point for escalating tensions between the executive branch and the judiciary, which has blocked a number of Mr Trump's signature policies. The US Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Mr Abrego Garcia's return, with liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying the government had cited no basis for what she called his 'warrantless arrest.' Ms Bondi said Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele agreed to return Mr Abrego Garcia to the US after US officials presented his government with an arrest warrant. The indictment was filed in federal court in Tennessee on May 21, more than two months after Mr Abrego Garcia's deportation. 'The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,' Mr Bondi said in a press conference. In a statement, Mr Abrego Garcia's lawyer, Andrew Rossman, said it would now be up to the US judicial system to ensure he received due process. 'Today's action proves what we've known all along – that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so,' said Mr Rossman, a partner at law firm Quinn Emanuel. Mr Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador, despite an immigration judge's 2019 order granting him protection from deportation to El Salvador after finding he was likely to be persecuted by gangs if returned there, court records show. Critics of President Donald Trump pointed to the erroneous deportation as an example of the excesses of the Republican president's aggressive approach to stepping up deportations. US District Judge Paula Xinis has opened a probe into what, if anything, the Trump administration had done to secure his return, after his lawyers accused officials of stonewalling their requests for information. Officials countered by alleging that Mr Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang. His lawyers have denied that Mr Abrego Garcia was a member of the gang and said he had not been charged with or convicted of any crime. The indictment alleges that Mr Abrego Garcia worked with at least five co-conspirators to bring immigrants to the United States illegally, and then transport them from the border to other destinations in the country. Mr Abrego Garcia often picked up migrants in Houston, the indictment said. The indictment also charges Mr Abrego Garcia and two unidentified co-conspirators with transporting firearms illegally purchased in Texas for resale in Maryland. Mr Abrego Garcia also transported illegal narcotics purchased in Texas for resale in Maryland and was on some occasions accompanied on those trips by members and associates of MS-13, according to the indictment. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
CNA
15 minutes ago
- CNA
South Korea's Lee, Trump agree to work towards swift tariff deal, Lee's office says
SEOUL/WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump and South Korea's new president Lee Jae-myung agreed to work toward a swift tariff deal in their first phone call since Lee was elected this week, Lee's office said on Friday (Jun 6). Trump has imposed tariffs on South Korea, a long time ally with which it has a bilateral free trade deal, and pressed it to pay more for the 28,500 US troops stationed there. Separately, Trump allies have aired concerns about Lee's more conciliatory stance towards China, Washington's main geopolitical rival. Lee, a liberal, was elected on Jun 3 after former conservative leader, Yoon Suk Yeol, was impeached and ousted. The future of South Korea's export-oriented economy may hinge on what kind of deal Lee can strike with Trump, with all of his country's key sectors from chips to autos and shipbuilding heavily exposed to global trade. His term began on Wednesday. "The two presidents agreed to make an effort to reach a satisfactory agreement on tariff consultations as soon as possible that both countries can be satisfied with," Lee's office said in a statement. "To this end, they decided to encourage working-level negotiations to yield tangible results." Trump invited Lee to a summit in the US and they plan to meet soon, according to a White House official. Analysts say the first opportunity for the two to meet could be at a G7 summit in Canada in mid-June. Lee's office said the two leaders also discussed the assassination attempts they both experienced last year as well as their enthusiasm for golf. Lee underwent surgery after he was stabbed in the neck by a man in January last year, while Trump was wounded in the ear by a bullet fired by a would-be assassin in July. South Korea, a major US ally and one of the first countries after Japan to engage with Washington on trade talks, agreed in late April to craft a "July package" scrapping levies before the 90-day pause on Trump's reciprocal tariffs is lifted, but progress was disrupted by the change of governments in Seoul. Lee said on the eve of the elections that "the most pressing matter is trade negotiations with the United States." Lee's camp has said, however, that they intend to seek more time to negotiate on trade with Trump. While reiterating the importance of the US-South Korea alliance, Lee has also expressed more conciliatory plans for ties with China and North Korea, singling out the importance of China as a major trading partner while indicating a reluctance to take a firm stance on security tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Political analysts say that while Trump and Lee may share a desire to try to re-engage with North Korea, Lee's stance on China could cause friction with the US. A White House official said this week that South Korea's election was fair, but expressed concern about Chinese interference in what analysts said may have been a cautionary message to Lee. Speaking in Singapore last week, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said many countries were tempted by the idea of seeking economic cooperation with China and defense cooperation with the United States, and warned that such entanglement complicated defense cooperation.
