Polish foreign minister takes aim at Musk after Trump clash
WARSAW: Poland's foreign minister poked fun at Elon Musk late on Thursday, returning to a social media spat from March after the Tesla and SpaceX boss spectacularly fell out with US President Donald Trump.
Warsaw's top diplomat Radoslaw Sikorski found himself embroiled in an extraordinarily public clash with Musk and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March after he said Ukraine may need an alternative to the Starlink satellite service.
Amid a flurry of posts on his social media platform X, Musk had told Sikorski to 'Be quiet, small man.'
On Thursday simmering tensions between Musk and Trump exploded into a public feud, as the president threatened to cut off government contracts to companies run by the world's richest man. Musk suggested Trump should be impeached.
Sikorski took aim at Musk in a post on X, saying 'See, big man, politics is harder than you thought.'
There was no immediate response to the post from Musk.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Arabiya
2 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Musk deletes post claiming Trump ‘in the Epstein files'
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has deleted an explosive allegation linking Donald Trump with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that he posted on social media during a vicious public fallout with the US president this week. Musk -- who exited his role as a top White House advisor just last week -- alleged on Thursday that the Republican leader is featured in secret government files on former associates of Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while he faced sex trafficking charges. The Trump administration has acknowledged it is reviewing tens of thousands of documents, videos and investigative material that his 'MAGA' movement says will unmask public figures complicit in Epstein's crimes. 'Time to drop the really big bomb: (Trump) is in the Epstein files,' Musk posted on his social media platform, X as his growing feud with the president boiled over into a spectacularly public row on Thursday. 'That is the real reason they have not been made public.' Musk did not reveal which files he was talking about and offered no evidence for his claim. He initially doubled down on the claim, writing in a follow-up message: 'Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.' However, he appeared to have deleted both tweets by Saturday morning. Supporters on the conspiratorial end of Trump's 'Make America Great Again' 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, although not at Trump himself. No official source has ever confirmed that the president appears in any of the material. Trump knew and socialized with Epstein but has denied spending time on Little Saint James, the private redoubt in the US Virgin Islands where prosecutors alleged Epstein trafficked underage girls for sex. 'Terrific guy,' Trump, who was Epstein's neighbor in both Florida and New York, said in an early 2000s profile of the financier. 'He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.' Just last week Trump gave Musk a glowing send-off as he left his cost-cutting role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But their relationship imploded within days as Musk described as an 'abomination' a spending bill that, if passed by Congress, could define Trump's second term in office. Trump hit back in an Oval Office diatribe and from there the row detonated, leaving Washington and riveted social media users alike stunned by the blistering break-up between the world's richest person and the world's most powerful. With real political and economic risks to their row, both then appeared to inch back from the brink on Friday, but the White House denied reports they would talk.
Al Arabiya
4 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Germany has three years to overhaul military: Official
Germany's armed forces have three years to acquire the equipment to tackle a possible Russian attack on NATO territory, the head of military procurement said Saturday. Defense spending has risen up the political agenda since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and more recently with the United States pushing NATO members to increase their commitments. 'Everything necessary to be fully prepared to defend the country must be acquired by 2028,' Annette Lehnigk-Emden, head of the Federal Office for Military Procurement, told Tagesspiegel newspaper. Chief of defense General Carsten Breuer recently warned that Russia could be in a position to 'launch a large-scale attack against NATO territory' as early as 2029. He said there was a Russian build-up of ammunition and tanks for a possible attack on NATO's Baltic members. Lehnigk-Emden stressed that Chancellor Friedrich Merz's new government was enabling the upgrade by allocating hundreds of billions of euros for defense. She said the priority would be for heavy equipment such as Skyranger anti-aircraft tanks. Merz has made rearmament a priority of his coalition government to make it 'the most powerful conventional army in Europe.' Rearmament had already begun under the previous government of Olaf Scholz after Russia launched its war in Ukraine. And US President Donald Trump has raised the temperature further this year by pushing NATO members to increase their defense spending to five percent of GDP from the current level of two percent. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Thursday that 50,000 to 60,000 new soldiers would be needed in the coming years to meet the increased defense needs of NATO. Last year, the army had more than 180,000 soldiers and set a goal of exceeding 203,000 by 2031.
Asharq Al-Awsat
6 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
US Labor Market Slows Despite Job Adds in May
The United States added 139,000 jobs in May, more than expected but pointing to a labor market that continues to slow. The employment data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics exceeded forecasts for about 120,000 payroll gains but marked a decline from the revised 147,000 jobs added in April. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%, remaining near historic lows. Stocks surged at Friday's open, with all three major indexes gaining about 1%. In return, US government borrowing costs climbed as investors anticipated the Federal Reserve would keep interest rates higher for longer, making it less attractive to hold US debt. The BLS report showed job losses in the federal government continued to pile up, with that sector shedding 22,000 roles in May alone. The federal workforce is down by 59,000 since January, largely due to sweeping cuts by the Trump administration and multibillionaire tech executive Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency project. Even as the economy continued to add jobs at a relatively steady clip last month, the report showed other signs of a weakening labor market. The ratio of employed workers to the total population fell to 59.7%, its lowest since the pandemic. An alternative measure of unemployment that includes 'discouraged' workers, or those who have stopped looking for work, returned to a post-pandemic high of 4.5%. But President Donald Trump cheered the numbers, posting on his Truth Social platform Friday morning: 'AMERICA IS HOT! SIX MONTHS AGO IT WAS COLD AS ICE! BORDER IS CLOSED, PRICES ARE DOWN. WAGES ARE UP!' Trump had urged Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to slash interest rates by a full percentage point. 'Too Late' at the Fed is a disaster!' Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. In reality, employers added 212,000 jobs in November, unemployment was at 4.1%, the 12-month average of hourly pay gains have softened from nearly 4.2% then to 3.9% in May, and both the labor force participation rate and the employment-to-population ratio were slightly higher. Only consumer prices have meaningfully cooled, ticking down from an annual inflation rate of 2.7% in November to 2.3% in April, the latest month with available data. Analysts at Capital Economics called the May jobs report 'not as good as it looks.' Still, they wrote in a note Friday, 'it shows that tariffs are having little negative impact' and added that the Federal Reserve is likely to continue holding interest rates steady 'while it assesses the effects of policy changes on the economy.'
