It's not just the big beautiful bill: Elon Musk is now at war with whole swaths of Trump's agenda
Elon Musk began his break with Donald Trump this week with a move against the president's signature legislative priority: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
But it widened quickly on Thursday with Musk making a case not just against that bill but with ever-widening critiques that now span significant chunks of Trump's agenda as well as the Republican party itself.
Thursday night brought two Musk posts that signaled a lowering of the temperature for now, but the man often described as America's most powerful private citizen is now forcefully on the record against everything from Trump's tariffs to saying Republicans are just bad as Democrats on America's runaway debt.
The policy problems are one that could be felt through the next election in a perhaps even longer-lasting fashion than the scorching personal attacks between the two men.
As one lawmaker told Politico "I don't think he's killing the bill...I'm more worried he's killing our sales pitch."
The outlet also reported Friday that a phone call could be in the offing today between Trump and Musk to find a detente. Meanwhile Trump told ABC Friday he is "not particularly" interested in talking to Musk.
The president has also given as good as he's gotten, floating the canceling of Musk's government contracts and saying that Elon was "wearing thin."
And the president and other Republicans have tried to insinuate (somewhat gently for now) that Musk's political critiques are less about principles than about his business interests, specifically about the cancelling of solar and EV credits in the bill that making its way through Congress.
It's a charge Musk has denied, posting at one point "Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill..but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK."
On the economic front, Musk broke new ground during his storm of posts with pointed opposition to tariffs, writing Thursday afternoon that Trump's policy "will cause a recession in the second half of this year."
It was by far the most direct trade comment from Musk and positions him as an opponent of both of Trump's main economic initiatives.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla (TSLA), had previously taken pains to avoid tweeting about tariffs before offering more oblique criticisms focused on Trump's staff or in anti-tariff messages delivered behind closed doors.
That's gone.
Musk has now publicly predicted an economic downturn — and offered that Trump's tariffs will be the cause.
Musk also took aim at the two-party system in a series of posts suggesting the creation of a new political party and endorsing the idea of making lawmakers ineligible for re-election if the debt gets too high.
Whether Musk follows through on those moves very much remains to be seen. But Musk has already slammed not just the reconciliation bill — which he has called a "disgusting abomination" — but has made a wider case that the Republican party is not serious about the debt issue.
At one point, Musk amplified a post suggesting "both Republicans and Democrats don't want to reduce the deficit," calling it "sadly true" among other similar messages.
It flies in the face of a Trump and Republican message — that often isn't backed up by evidence but is widely repeated — that Democrats are the profligate free spending party with Republicans more responsible stewards.
"I'm a fiscal hawk...there's nobody like me as a fiscal hawk," Trump claimed recently.
The policy criticisms from Musk have of course been overshadowed by the shocking personal attacks.
Musk posts have seen him floating everyhting from the concept of impeachment to calling the president a liar to the accusation that Trump "is in the Epstein files" and covering it up (in reference to government files related to former financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein).
In response, Trump has said Musk "just went CRAZY!"
Those salacious details have gotten lots of attention, but that comes even as there is little evidence any of it is fundamentally changing Republican politics around the bill on Capitol Hill.
Fiscal conservatives are indeed emboldened by Musk but some of the more shocking personal attacks from Musk have led them to distance themselves from the billionaire.
Meanwhile Republican leadership is doing everything they can to move forward and ignore Musk's advice to "kill the bill."
As the Trump-Musk fight was nearing its apex Thursday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune gave a speech with an unmistakable message: "Pedal to the Metal."
Senate Republicans are indeed in the process of amending the package — and could adjust things like the State and Local Tax deduction (SALT) and certain business credits — but there is little sense any amendment will change the bill enough to address Musk's main critique of it's multi-trillion dollar price tag.
But as Musk put it at one point "Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years…"
Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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