The growing divide between Elon Musk and U.S. President Donald Trump has become a canyon.
On Thursday, the president and his so-called “First Buddy” traded barbs in front of cameras and on social media, showcasing to the world their fractious working relationship and friendship.
Two days after Musk called Trump’s big tax break bill a “disgusting abomination,” the president fired back, saying he is “very disappointed” with the billionaire.
The president, answering questions in the Oval Office Thursday, escalated the feud with his former special government employee, saying he’s “very surprised” at Musk’s repeated attacks on his centrepiece budget bill.
“Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump told reporters Thursday.
“He hasn’t said bad [sic] about me personally, but I’m sure that will be next,” Trump continued. “But I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot.”
Trump continued, adding that a lot of people who leave his administration “miss it so badly” and “actually become hostile.”
“It’s sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it,” he said.
“I’ll be honest, I think he missed the place. He got out there, and all of a sudden he wasn’t in this beautiful Oval Office,” he continued.
He also took the opportunity, as he so often does with his critics, to dunk on Musk’s appearance — namely the black eye the Tesla CEO was seen sporting on his final day in the White House.
“I said, ‘Do you want a little makeup? We’ll get you a little makeup.’ Which is interesting,” Trump said.
“Whatever,” Musk wrote on X, his social media platform, while responding to Trump in real time.
The billionaire, who once claimed he loved Trump “as much as a straight man could love another man,” offered up several more stinging retorts to Trump — a man notoriously fixated on his image and support among voters.
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“Without me, Trump would have lost the election,” Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude,” he said in a follow-up post, seemingly referring to the more than US$250 million in personal money he ponied up to back the Trump campaign last fall — cash that many believe helped Trump win his second term.
Trump then hit back with his own post on his own social media platform, Truth Social, saying that Musk was “wearing thin” and that he asked the billionaire to leave his contract government position.
“Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump shared.
@realDonaldTrump / Truth Social
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!” he continued in a separate post, moments later, threatening to cut Musk’s government contracts.
@realDonaldTrump / Truth Social
In turn, Musk responded, saying his company, SpaceX, would “begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.”
Dragon spacecraft are used to ferry crews and supplies to the International Space Station, alongside NASA shuttles.
In March, a Dragon spacecraft was involved in the return to Earth of astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who were stranded at the ISS for over nine months due to issues with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft.
Trump publicly asked Musk for help in returning the astronauts after numerous delays under the Biden administration. SpaceX ultimately had to cycle through multiple spacecraft to try and speed up the mission.
The Republican president’s comments come after Musk has stewed for days on social media about Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” warning that it will increase the federal deficit.
Musk has also lashed out at Trump’s tariff policy, predicting Thursday on X that the tariffs “will cause a recession in the second half of this year.”
It was just last week that Musk wrapped up his stint as a special government employee in the Trump administration, where he was tasked with uncovering and slashing government waste with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Elon Musk in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, May 30, 2025, in Washington.
Evan Vucci / The Associated Press
His comments echo ones made days before departing his post, when he told CBS he was “disappointed” by Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful” bill, saying it “undermines” the work he put into helping cut government spending.
He described the legislation, which includes a mix of tax cuts and enhanced immigration enforcement, as a “massive spending bill” that will ultimately increase the federal deficit.
“I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful,” Musk said. “But I don’t know if it could be both.”
Republican lawmakers who passed the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives have since tried to defend themselves from Musk’s criticism.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Wednesday he tried to call Musk but the billionaire didn’t respond, adding the Tesla CEO is “flat-out wrong” with his claims about the bill.
On Wednesday, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shared analysis that estimates the package, titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” would cut taxes by US$3.75 trillion but also increase deficits by $2.4 trillion over the next decade.
The CBO also estimates an increase of 10.9 million people without health insurance under the bill by 2034, including 1.4 million who are in the country without legal status in state-funded programs.
The package would reduce federal outlays, or spending, by nearly $1.3 trillion over that period, the budget office said.
The legislation — which still needs to pass the Senate — would extend Trump’s signature 2017 tax cuts, boost border security spending, impose work requirements on Medicaid and roll back clean energy tax credits.
— With files from The Associated Press
