The bromance of the billionaires is over

6 Jun

Library of Congress / Unsplash. The Royal Society / Wikicommons.

Never again can a man say that women are too emotional when the world's richest man and the President of the United States are currently engaged in a highly public fallout over social media.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump's public feud has escalated dramatically following a series of policy disagreements, personal attacks, and financial repercussions. Personally, we love a little friendly fire in the MAGA camp.

Musk's departure from the Trump administration in May 2025 marked the beginning of the fallout. It seemed Musk’s parting words of criticism for Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, which threatened to bloat the country's national deficit to over 2.4 trillion-dollars. The ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is a 4.5-trillion dollar tax and spending package that extends many provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA). This bill includes tax cuts for high-income earners and corporations, while proposing significant cuts to social programs like Medicaid and SNAP.

Musk labeled the bill a "disgusting abomination" and accused Trump of fiscal irresponsibility and even brought the receipts on X (formerly Twitter) by digging up Trump’s old tweets to prove the contradictions in his policies against his former opinions.

In response, Trump threatened to cancel SpaceX's 21 billion dollars in government contracts and suggested Musk was suffering from "Trump Derangement Syndrome".

The public spat had immediate financial consequences. Tesla's stock plummeted by 14.3%, erasing approximately 150 billion-dollar in market value, while Trump Media & Technology Group's shares dropped 8.04%.

Musk further escalated tensions on his social media platform by endorsing a suggestion that Trump should be impeached and replaced by Vice President J.D. Vance. He also accused Trump of being implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein files, alleging this was the reason for withholding the full public release of the documents.

Trump retaliated by withdrawing Elon ally Jared Isaacman's nomination for NASA administrator and threatened Musk’s business interests. Musk responded by suggesting he would decommission SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, currently the only U.S. vehicle capable of ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.

As of the latest updates Trump and Musk were using Truth Social and X respectively, to trash-talk their rivals in a series of posts and re-posts.