‘Vladimir Putin offers peace deal': Elon Musk, Donald Trump's bitter fallout spurs memes, jokes
Donald Trump's relationship with Tesla chief Elon Musk took a dramatic turn on Thursday when the US President threatened to cut government contracts to Musk's businesses, SpaceX.
In a social media post on his social messaging service Truth Social, Donald Trump wrote, 'The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts." He added, "'I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!'
This statement wiped out nearly $150 billion from Tesla's market value. This reverses the big runup it witnessed in the past eight weeks after Musk confirmed that Tesla would be testing an autonomous, driverless 'robotaxi' service in Austin, Texas, this month.
Musk's privately owned rocket company -SpaceX - reportedly received billions of dollars from the government to send astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, provide launches and do other work for the US space agency, NASA.
Netizens strongly reacted to the bitter fallout between the two business tycoons and flooded social media with hilarious reactions, memes and jokes. A user wrote, 'PM Modi got Elon Musk and Trump to call a ceasefire.'
Another user remarked, "Vladimir Putin has offered to negotiate a peace deal between President Trump and Elon Musk.
A third user stated, 'Modi ji should announce a ceasefire between Musk & Trump.'
A fourth user joked, 'The bromance is over.' A fifth user quipped, 'Me logging on Twitter to see Musk and Trump fighting.'
This comes after Tesla shares hit an all-time high on December 17 in the weeks after Trump was elected. A year before 2024 US election, SpaceX was valued at $210 billion but its shares surged and were estimated at $350 billion during a recent private financing round.
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Donald Trump has many ways to hurt Elon Musk
THERE WAS a time, not long ago, when an important skill for journalists was translating the code in which powerful people spoke about each other. Carefully prepared speeches and other public remarks would be dissected for hints about the arguments happening in private. Among Donald Trump's many achievements is upending this system. In his administration people seem to say exactly what they think at any given moment. Wild threats are made—to end habeas corpus; to take Greenland by force—without any follow-through. Journalists must now try to guess what is real and what is for show. So it is with the break-up between Mr Trump and Elon Musk, the world's richest man and until last week a 'special government employee". A few months ago Mr Musk posted on X, his social-media platform, that he loved the president 'as much as a straight man can love another man". On May 30th, at a joint press conference in the Oval Office to announce Mr Musk's departure from government, Mr Trump called him 'an incredible patriot" and praised his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (known as DOGE). Yet by June 5th it had all broken down. On his Truth Social media platform the president posted that the billionaire was 'wearing thin" and 'went CRAZY". Mr Trump then threatened to 'terminate" his government contracts. Mr Musk responded on X, claiming that Mr Trump's name appears in the government's files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier who was convicted of trafficking and having sex with underage girls. 'That is the real reason they have not been made public," wrote Mr Musk. Later he agreed with a post saying that Mr Trump should be impeached. He also said he would begin decommissioning his Dragon spacecraft, which transports astronauts to the International Space Station. If carried out, the threats could be disastrous for both men. Mr Trump could lose a valuable donor and the supportive sway of X; Mr Musk's business interests could suffer enormously. But in response to a comment advising him to 'cool off", Mr Musk wrote 'good advice" and backtracked on his call to decommission the Dragon. Where things go from here is anyone's guess. The initial cause of the falling out between Mr Trump and his 'first buddy" was the president's so-called 'One Big Beautiful Bill". Mr Musk was incensed that the measure would add enormously to the deficit, and so undermine the work of DOGE. On June 3rd he escalated his criticism, calling the bill a 'disgusting abomination". On June 5th he added another complaint, saying that Mr Trump's tariffs are going to bring about a recession. Mr Trump has his own explanation for Mr Musk's sudden disloyalty. He says the Tesla CEO is unhappy because his bill would cancel a government subsidy for electric cars created by Joe Biden. If Mr Trump does decide to retaliate, the risks to Mr Musk and his businesses are extensive. The threats the president has already made, however, are the least credible. Cancelling the contracts of SpaceX, Mr Musk's space company, would be profoundly disruptive to the government. Without SpaceX rockets, it would struggle to put anything into space, including spy satellites. The Pentagon relies heavily on the firm's Starlink satellites. SpaceX itself could probably weather such moves. Though it has benefited greatly from government contracts, the firm's commercial revenues soared nearly three-fold last year, according to estimates by Quilty Space, a business-intelligence firm. Mr Musk has also wanted to cancel the Dragon spacecraft for some time. Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Mr Trump who is no fan of Mr Musk, has proposed even bigger penalties. He wants the South African-born billionaire to be stripped of his American citizenship—he says Mr Musk is an 'illegal alien"—and his companies nationalised under the Defence Production Act. Such actions also seem unrealistic. Stripping Mr Musk's citizenship would require a judge to rule he committed fraud. The Defence Production Act almost certainly does not permit sudden nationalisation, even if the country is at war. That does not mean Mr Musk can breathe easy, though. His interests are vulnerable to more routine measures. At the time he entered government in January, he and his companies were subject to 65 potential or actual regulatory actions by 11 federal agencies, according to the minority staff of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, an arm of the Senate. 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Mr Musk may be about to discover what life is like outside the tent. Perhaps on feeling the cold he will find a way back inside. © 2025, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on
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(Bloomberg) -- The Trump administration is intensifying efforts to round up migrants and it's using increasingly aggressive tactics. In scenes from Los Angeles to Massachusetts, agents outfitted with bullet-resistant vests and often displaying military-style rifles are shown in social media videos and photos being escorted along city streets by armored vehicles. A clip from Rhode Island shows an agent standing in a truck's open hatch, manning a rifle. Teams of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deployed heavily armed and helmeted officers to make arrests Friday around LA. In the downtown Fashion District, according to video posted to X, agents holding riot shields moved through the area on an armored vehicle, while others fired multiple flash-bang grenades as protesters gathered along their path. It's at least the second time in the last week that such tools were deployed to disperse protesters. 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In the case of ICE's immigration raids, Shirk and others say the tactics aren't only over the top, they risk further inflaming already tense situations, making it more dangerous for the targets, bystanders and the agents themselves. They say the raids are disproportionate to the threat and seem designed to maximize optics for US President Donald Trump and his supporters, while demonizing migrants who lack legal status but are otherwise law abiding. ICE officials are unapologetic about the shows of force, saying agents must take maximum precautions to protect themselves from dangerous gang members and other criminals. And if the high-profile raids encourage other migrants without documentation to leave, all the better. In social media posts, ICE routinely urges people to avoid arrest by self-deporting. In San Diego last week, an operation targeting workers at the popular Italian restaurant Buona Forchetta included agents dressed in camouflage, helmeted and masked, and some carrying rifles. It drew as many as 250 spontaneous protesters who shouted abuse at the agents. Eventually officials deployed stun grenades to disperse the crowd. The agency declined to specify the exact number of arrests or detail any criminal records of those taken into custody. 'The officers took appropriate action and followed their training to use the minimum amount of force necessary,' Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security department, said in a statement. 'In large part due to protests like this, our ICE officers are facing a 413% increase in assaults while carrying out arrests.' Operations across Massachusetts over the past month resulted in the arrests of nearly 1,500 people for immigration violations, more than half of whom the government said had criminal records in the US or abroad. Heavily armed and masked officers were involved in many of the apprehensions. In raids in Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard last month, about 40 people were arrested and moved out of the area on a Coast Guard patrol boat. In February, agents in Phoenix used an armored vehicle equipped with a battering ram when they arrested a 61-year-old man. At the time, the agency described the arrest as part of a routine operation and said the man had been deported several times and had multiple criminal convictions. 'The more police dress up in military gear and arm themselves with military equipment, the more likely they are to see themselves as at war with people, and that is not what we want,' said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy project manager for policing at the American Civil Liberties Union. An expanded show of force by policing agencies can 'lead to unnecessary violence that leads to unnecessary harm,' she added. Todd Lyons, the acting head of ICE, this week defended agents' actions, including wearing masks, saying it was for their protection as the public grows increasingly hostile toward their work. 'I am sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I'm not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line, and their family's lives on the line, because people don't like what immigration enforcement is,' Lyons said during a press conference. He cited incidents of people identifying agents and then harassing them and their family members online, sometimes posting children's photos and other private information. The agency has made tens of thousands of arrests and deported tens of thousands of foreigners since Trump took office. But top administration aren't happy with the pace. In a tense meeting last month with dozens of top ICE officials Stephen Miller, a top aide to Trump and an architect of the the administration's hardline policies, said arrests should average a minimum of 3,000 a day. Many of those senior agents and officers left the meeting worried they would lose their jobs if the quota isn't met, according to a person familiar with the private discussion. The growing frequency of operations — and the gear agents are toting — can be unsettling to community members who aren't accustomed to such broad enforcement operations, according to Jerry Robinette, a former ICE agent who led the agency's Homeland Security Investigations office in San Antonio until he retired in 2012. 'They are in areas where people aren't used to seeing them and some folks are taken aback by what they are seeing, taken aback by the show of force,' said Robinette, adding that it's hard to second guess the show of force in San Diego without more details. 'Without knowing what the underlying crime that they were concerned about, its really hard to say this was an overkill.' Robinette and others said raids involving heavily armed and helmeted agents aren't unheard of in HSI operations. He said a more robust presence is often used in cases involving serious criminal organizations, including drug trafficking networks. In Warwick, Rhode Island, last month, a heavily armed contingent of officers was deployed to arrest a Guatemalan man who had evaded arrest during an April traffic stop. In that incident, according to federal court records, the suspect flailed about and wiggled away from arresting officers, leading one to twist her ankle and ultimately fracture her leg. The suspect was charged with assault, resisting and impeding a law enforcement officer after his May arrest. He is being held in federal custody, court records show. In San Diego, there's been no clarity on who was targeted by the ICE raid at the Italian restaurant. The tactics raised alarms from local officials. 'Militarized immigration raids in our neighborhoods erode trust, destabilize families and undermine the constitutional right to due process,' County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer said in a statement posted to X. City Councilman Sean Elo-Rivera posted a photo of the restaurant raid to Instagram and wrote the word 'terrorists' over the image. Others have described ICE agents as a 'gestapo.' Lyons, in an interview with Fox News, said such descriptions of his officers were 'just plain disgusting.' Elo-Rivera said he stands by his comments, and described the show of force as unnecessary and intended to instill fear. 'It would scare anyone who saw them,' Elo-Rivera said. 'Nobody is safer as a result of the Trump administration attempting to enforce immigration laws.' (Adds details of Los Angeles raids from third paragraph.) More stories like this are available on
