Trump threatens to cut Musk government contracts amid agenda bill spat
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump hold a press conference in the Oval Office at the White House on Friday as Musk ends his tenure as director of the Department of Government Efficiency. Photo by Francis Chung/UPI | License Photo
June 5 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to cut Elon Musk's government contracts through Tesla amid his departure from his role cutting government spending and opposition to Trump's sweeping legislative agenda bill.
Trump threatened to end all government contracts with the Musk-founded Tesla in a post on Truth Social and suggested that would be a fast way to reduce government spending.
"The easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts," Trump wrote.
Tesla share prices declined by more than 14% on Thursday and shed $152 billion in value from the EV maker.
Trump on Thursday accused Musk of going "crazy" after the president canceled the federal electric vehicle mandate imposed by the Biden administration.
"I took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted," Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday. "He just went crazy!"
Trump said he asked Musk to leave his advisory position with DOGE, although Musk was scheduled to exit the position at the end of May.
Musk earlier said Trump would not have won the Nov. 5 election without his help.
He contributed an estimated $250 million to Trump's campaign effort.
"Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate," Musk said Thursday morning in a post on X.
Musk has criticized the proposed "one big, beautiful" federal government budget bill as increasing the nation's debt and negating his work with DOGE.
The entrepreneur opposes the spending bill that the House has passed and is before the Senate because it removed tax credits and subsidies for buying EVs, Trump claimed.
"I don't mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done that months ago," Trump said in a subsequent Truth Social post on Thursday afternoon.
"This is one of the greatest bills ever presented to Congress," he continued. "It's a record cut in expenses, $1.6 trillion dollars, and the biggest tax cut ever given."
If the measure is not passed, Trump said it will trigger a 68% tax increase, "and things far worse than that."
The president said the "easiest way to save money ... is to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts" with Tesla.
Later on Thursday, Musk in an X post said it is "time to drop the really big bomb" on the president.
Trump "is in the Epstein files," Musk said. "That is the real reason they have not been made public."
Musk did not say in what context Trump allegedly appears in the Epstein files, but ended his post with: "Have a nice day, DJT!"
He made a subsequent post that asks: "Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?"
Trump and Musk often appeared together at high-profile events in the first four months of the administration.
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