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Briefing|Trump’s Alliance With Musk Shattered
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/briefing/trumps-alliance-with-musk-shattered.html
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Over the last year, President Trump and Elon Musk have been among the world’s most powerful allies. Together, they worked to return Trump to the White House and radically reshape the federal government. Less than a week ago, they sang each other’s praises.
Then, today, over the course of just a few hours, the alliance between Trump and Musk dissolved into open acrimony. The two men hurled personal attacks at each other over matters both significant and petty. Even by the Trump administration’s standards, it was a remarkable moment.
The dispute ostensibly centered on the president’s signature domestic policy bill, which Musk has attacked as a “disgusting abomination,” but the mudslinging quickly escalated. During a White House meeting with Germany’s leader, Friedrich Merz, Trump criticized Musk: “I’m very disappointed in Elon,” the president said. “I’ve helped Elon a lot.”
Musk shot back at Trump: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election,” he wrote on X. “Such ingratitude.” In follow-up posts, Musk suggested that he would leave the Republican Party, accused Trump of involvement with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and backed a call for the president’s impeachment.
Trump then threatened to cut billions of dollars in federal contracts and tax subsidies for Musk’s companies. “Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave,” Trump wrote on social media. Stock in Tesla, Musk’s car company, plummeted.
“When exactly President Trump and Elon Musk would break up has been a parlor game for months — even in their own inner circles,” our political reporter Theodore Schleifer said. “But even so, the breakdown that we saw today was swifter than any of them imagined.”
