Latest news with #politicalpartnership
ABC News
a day ago
- Business
- ABC News
How Trump's relationship with Elon Musk imploded
NORMAN HERMANT, REPORTER: It was a political partnership the likes of which America had never seen. DONALD TRUMP, US PRESIDENT: He saved free speech, He created so many different great things. Take over Elon, just take over. NORMAN HERMANT: The world's richest man and Donald Trump leading his MAGA movement back to the White House. DONALD TRUMP: We have a new star. A star is born. Elon. NORMAN HERMANT: When Donald Trump returned to the presidency, the two only seemed to grow closer with Elon Musk heading a team with the goal of slashing government spending. ELON MUSK: The chainsaw for bureaucracy. DONALD TRUMP: Elon is doing a great job. He is finding tremendous fraud and corruption, and waste. NORMAN HERMANT: But like other relationships that have burned bright in their early days, this one has crashed back to earth - fuelled by a series of acrimonious posts on social media. SIMEON BARBER, OPEN UNIVERSITY: It's the kind of thing you usually see in a kindergarten, isn't it, a fall out in the playground and it ends up with kids in tears and sent to sit on the naughty step MATT LABROT, FMR TESLA MANAGER: It would be funny, but it's not because these are two very important people who are going at it online and dividing people even further. NORMAN HERMANT: Over the last week the relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has come apart seemingly in real time - with each social media post, the rift appears wider and wider. First Musk slammed Trump's so called Big Beautiful budget bill calling its spending an abomination. Two days later in the Oval Office Trump told reporters he was very disappointed in Elon. Twenty-two minutes later, Musk posted: "Without me, Trump would have lost the election. Such ingratitude". He followed with a post about the possibility of starting a new political party that represents the 80 per cent of Americans in the middle. Trump wasted little time in responding, posting on his social media platform that Musk was wearing thin, and that when he took away the EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars, he 'just went crazy'. DONALD TRUMP: He's not the first. People to leave my administration and they love us and then at some point they miss it so badly and some of them embrace it and some of them actually become hostile. I don't know what it is, it's sort of Trump derangement syndrome. NORMAN HERMANT: Then Musk posted what he called 'the really big bomb'. Alleging that Donald Trump is in the files of the case against notorious sex abuser Jeffery Epstein, and that's reason they haven't been made public. The two then traded posts over the US governments contracts with Space X. The President suggested they could be terminated. Musk responded that Space X would begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft. All the while space scientists like Dr Simeon Barber were watching as America's main route to the International Space Station hung in the balance. SIMEON BARBER: I was amazed and dismayed when I saw this unfolding last week. NASA has become incredibly reliant upon SpaceX, most notably for getting crew members to and from the International Space Station. NORMAN HERMANT: Elon Musk's Dragon spacecraft and his Space X rockets are now the backbone of America's space program. SIMEON BARBER: These comments that are made off the cuff about I'll cancel these contracts. okay, I'll cancel this program, they have major, major consequences. International agencies collaborate to do space exploration. It's a big endeavour. You know, Australia is looking at getting on board with the ISS. These things take decades to plan, and you need some kind of stable underpinnings and foundation to build upon. NORMAN HERMANT: Musk later posted Dragon was safe and wouldn't be decommissioned but Barber says in field that prizes certainty, no one knows what's coming next. SIMEON BARBER: Maybe Trump feels he's come out on top now, but if that's the case, Elon Musk is going to be feeling, you know, a little bit wounded, I would say. And I suspect that that, you know, that might resurface in the future. NORMAN HERMANT: There are signs of de-escalation from Musk who deleted his post linking Donald Trump to the Epstein files, but the President also warned of consequences if Musk backed the Democrats. All of this is playing out as Musk refocuses on his CEO role at Tesla. Matt LaBrot spent five years as a manager at the electric car maker. He started a website called Tesla Employees Against Elon. MATT LABROT: It was about the damage that has been done to Tesla's brand and how as a company, if they want to survive, they need to move on from Elon. NORMAN HERMANT: LaBrot was fired days after the website went live in late April. He says he's heard from many employees and investors who agree Elon Musk's profile – once arguably a boost for Tesla -is now a burden. MATT LABROT: Just as it initially drove sales it is now also a detractor of sales instead. And the reasons can be political. They could be free speech, people who have issues with his Twitter. acquisition any of those different reasons. But they all lead to customers no longer wanting to buy Teslas and support Elon. (Extract from comical sketch) DONALD TRUMP PUPPET: Elon, get in here. I heard what you said. ELON MUSK PUPPET: That you bill is an abomination. DONALD TRUMP PUPPET: Yeah, say it to my face. ELON MUSK PUPPET: Uh, your bill's a (bleeped) abomination. (End of extract) NORMAN HERMANT: As for Americans and the world watching all of this, the big break up has launched a steady stream of memes and satirical takes. For now, no one knows if a make-up is on the cards or if this powerful pairing is gone for good.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
The Trump-Musk feud shows danger of handing the keys of power to one person
After a year of effusive praise and expressions of love for each other, Elon Musk and Donald Trump exploded their political partnership in dramatic fashion this week. The highly public split included, among other highlights, the world's richest person accusing the president of the United States of associating with a notorious sex offender. Trump said Musk had 'lost his mind'. As Musk and Trump traded insults, each on his own social network, they also issued threats with tangible consequences. Trump suggested that he could cancel all of Musk's government contracts and subsidies – 'the best way to save money', he posted – a move that would have devastating consequences not only on the tech billionaire's companies but also on the federal agencies that have come to depend on them. Musk responded by announcing that he would begin decommissioning the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that Nasa relies on for transport missions, although he later reversed the decision. While the ongoing episode had the tenor of sensational reality TV, the fight between Trump and Musk once again exposed the danger of putting key public goods in the hands of private companies controlled by erratic billionaires. It highlighted how something like space travel, once a vaunted and collective national enterprise, can now be almost entirely derailed by the emotional whims of a single person. Musk and Trump's partnership had already fueled months of concern about corruption and calls for investigations into the Tesla CEO's use of his position in government to benefit his companies. The breakup has highlighted another risk of Musk's deep ties with the government, where the services that he provides can now become collateral damage in interpersonal disputes. Tens of billions of dollars hang in the balance of their fight. The messy, public way that the clash has played out also serves as a reminder of how unpredictable their decision-making can be. Musk's vow to sideline SpaceX's spacecraft and his reversal, without which the US would have immediately been prevented from reaching the International Space Station, appeared, for instance, as an emotional lash-out amid a string of other insults against Trump, and it was nearly impossible to discern whether he was serious. 'In light of the President's statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately,' Musk posted without warning on Thursday. 'Good advice. Ok, we won't decommission Dragon,' Musk followed up less than a day later, responding to an anonymous user with around 5,000 followers who said he should 'cool off and take a step back for a couple days'. If Musk and Trump's fight ends up disrupting government services or further turning them into political leverage, it will not have come without warning. Ever since Musk refused in 2023 to let Ukraine use Starlink in Crimea to launch a surprise attack against Russian forces, governments have dealt with the uncomfortable reality of Musk's control over global infrastructure. Musk's claim that he could hobble Ukraine's 'entire front line' by turning off Starlink caused a diplomatic incident earlier this year. Meanwhile, European governments have recently rushed to find alternatives to Starlink amid concerns over Musk's unpredictability. While Musk provoked foreign governments and acted as an unaccountable global power broker, the US has by contrast continued to hand him contracts and increase its dependence on his companies. Space operations in particular have become practically synonymous with Musk. Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion Since SpaceX won its first Nasa contract in 2006, the government has awarded about $15bn worth of contracts to the company and come to depend on it for ferrying astronauts and cargo into space. Nasa has also contracted SpaceX for its planned crewed mission to the moon, as well as a mission to explore one of Saturn's moons. Last year, the agency turned to SpaceX when it needed to rescue two astronauts stuck on the ISS. The government's reliance on Musk's empire also extends beyond Nasa. The Pentagon has extensive contracts with Musk, using SpaceX to launch intelligence satellites. SpaceX was also the frontrunner in the Trump administration's plans to build a 'Golden Dome' missile defense shield, which has become a US national defense priority. Starlink, Musk's satellite communications service, had also made inroads into the government to the point that it was installed this year at the White House. Musk is still accountable to market forces and the investors backing his companies, as was made evident on Thursday after Tesla's shares plunged roughly 14% during his dustup with Trump. Musk has previously stated that he is willing to lose money over his ideology, however, and his immense wealth somewhat insulates him against even large shocks to his companies. When Tesla's shares dropped on Thursday, it wiped about $34bn off his total net worth in a single day – yet he remained the world's richest person by a gap of more than $90bn. The extensive reliance on Musk and privatization of government services has always drawn criticism from ethics watchdogs and some aerospace or defense industry experts, but it appears especially risky now that Musk has threatened to hold certain services hostage. It has also served as a counterpoint to the project of slashing and privatizing the federal government that Musk spent his tenure with the Trump administration carrying out. Musk has furiously campaigned against bureaucracy, courts and regulators as impediments to getting things done, but these also exist as a bulwark against exactly the kind of unaccountable personal power and erratic whims that both he and Trump put on display during their clash.
