Another Divorce for Trump
Plus: A cynical take on Zohran Mamdani, Florida's drinking water threatened, and more...
He needs space: Yesterday, President Donald Trump and his right-hand man, former head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and occasionally-present CEO of X, Tesla, and SpaceX, Elon Musk, had a colossal blowup that played out in public, conducted primarily via X and Truth Social for all to see. At one point, Trump said he'd pull all the government subsidies and contracts Musk benefits from. At another, Musk accused Trump of being in the Epstein files, implying he was a frequent visitor to Pedo Island. The two, once thick as thieves, appear to be splitting up. Let me break it down for you.
It started with a Musk tweet over—oddly enough—government spending.
"I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination," Musk wrote on X on Tuesday. "Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it."
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The "big, beautiful bill" is Trump's first major legislative accomplishment of the term, currently likely to pass in the Senate after making it through the House.
"I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing," Musk said in an interview with CBS last week. "I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion."
Musk is right on that last point, but the idea that the bill—which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade—"undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing" is laughable. If Musk had actually been committed to tackling government spending, he would have approached cutting entitlements. He was only ever working with the discretionary portion of the budget, (so roughly one quarter, max). What he actually accomplished with the discretionary budget was slapdash and overhyped, focused on staffing cuts—many of which were not especially meritocratic, and done via improper authority (and thus partially undone by the courts)—and, like, canceling software licenses (for which duplicates exist due to the classified vs. unclassified nature of government work). There's been some admirable digitization and calling attention to waste within the U.S. Agency for International Development (with accompanying cuts). Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D–Mass.) Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been essentially stopped in its tracks, with its fate presently unclear. But for Musk to act like his efforts amounted to anything much in the way of truly trimming the federal budget is silly.
That said, anyone talking fiscally conservative talk in public is a friend of mine indeed, so let's not worry too much about the veracity of Musk's claim: He has an issue with the spending bill, so now Trump has an issue with him. (Some Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) retweetage surely didn't help.)
Absolutely https://t.co/OPfIN3wdzw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2025
"Elon and I had a great relationship, I don't know if we will anymore…And he hasn't said bad about me personally, but I'm sure that'll be next. But I'm very disappointed in Elon," said Trump yesterday when reporters asked him about the comments. "I've helped Elon a lot." Trump also recently declared he would've won Pennsylvania without Musk's support, which escalated matters.
"Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate," countered Musk on X. "Such ingratitude."
"Oh and some food for thought as they ponder this question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years," he added.
Then he started going really nuclear:
Time to drop the really big bomb:@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.
Have a nice day, DJT!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
Trump's sort of flaccid response:
President Trump responds after Elon Musk accused him of being in the Epstein files. pic.twitter.com/TnogRC9R9X
— The Immortal (@TheImmortal007) June 5, 2025
"Elon's upset because we took the [electric vehicle] mandate and—you know, which was a lot of money for electric vehicles," Trump had theorized in his Oval Office comments earlier in the day. "He only developed a problem [with the bill] when he found out I would cut the EV mandate," Trump added, posting on Truth Social that Musk "went CRAZY" over the changes to the mandate. "Keep the EV/solar incentives cuts in the bill, also cut all the crazy spending increases in the Big Ugly Bill so that America doesn't go bankrupt!" Musk replied.
Then Musk went on a tear, directing followers to times when he discouraged lawmakers from passing EV tax credits and a Massie tweet about how "Some politicians get into politics to enrich themselves. Maybe that's why they can't imagine someone would judge a bill based on what's good for the country instead of what's good for their wallet." If that's not a subtweet at Trump, I don't know what is.
It's all really, really tedious. Looked at one way, the fracas was inevitable: Trump, with perhaps the notable exception of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, has had a very hard time keeping close advisers for years at a time. Staffing shakeups provided constant amusement (and useful dysfunction) during the first term; the second term's lieutenants appear to have been selected a bit more carefully. But Musk is mercurial, with enough wealth to retain independence, who has been consistently hawkish on reining in government spending, so it's not surprising that tensions would at some point emerge.
Looked at another way, Trump's main moderating force—perhaps one of the only people operating behind the scenes, telling him not to pursue reckless tariff policies—may now be out of the picture. We might stand to lose, especially if the spurned president goes on a vengeful tear and deliberately pursues policies that Musk dislikes.
But looked at a third way, we might all stand to gain. Musk raises political consciousness and reinvigorates a movement to cut government spending (while rightly cautioning that we're barreling toward recession if the tariffs really go into full effect). Trump cuts the government subsidies and contracts that Musk benefits from, and gets the government out of electric vehicle subsidization. The "big, beautiful bill" gets torpedoed and the deficit doesn't balloon quite so much. Massie sleeps more soundly at night, and gains a friend in Musk.
But you'd be forgiven for being angry that a republic built on Publius and Cato sparring over federalism and judicial review and checks and balances has descended into such petty bullshit.
It's a battle of egos, with some legitimate points thrown in there. Musk is not wrong that government spending is out of control, and that Trump and his lackeys in Congress have abandoned any pretense of fiscal conservatism. He's also possibly not wrong that Trump hobnobbed with evil men like Jeffrey Epstein, but it's not like anyone was voting for the president for his high morals in the first place, nor is it a shock that Trump and Epstein rubbed shoulders. But the thing that's perhaps most upsetting: I don't think this ends in self-reflection, and in Musk convincing Trump to embrace limited government. It also might unfortunately end in astronauts being trapped in space. (Again?)
In light of the President's statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately pic.twitter.com/NG9sijjkgW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
It's fun to watch the drama if you're terminally online, but I think this take is possibly correct if you're thinking about the long game here:
Elon Musk and Trump duking it out on social media is entertaining but I strongly suspect Trump turning on the Federalist Society because conservative judges don't always rule in his favor is the more consequential betrayal.
— Kelsey Piper (@KelseyTuoc) June 5, 2025
And here's some cold water thrown on the Pedo Island claim:
One of the ways you can be sure that conspiracy theories are total bullshit is the fact that long term it would require bipartisan commitment to the cover up even in an age of increasingly vitriolic and totalizing partisan warfare
— Ben Dreyfuss (@bendreyfuss) June 5, 2025
I'm sure the two men, fueled by their respective diets of ketamine and diet coke, will continue to exchange barbs well into the weekend, probably at 2 a.m. when all normal adults are sleeping. And I'm sure I'll have more updates for you on Monday. But in the meantime, I can't help but wonder whether this drama actually serves the American taxpayer in any meaningful way. I hope so, but the era of fiscal prudence appears to be over. I'm not sure Musk can bring it back—at least not like this.
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QUICK HITS
- Pretty much:
It's funny how people think this is an ad for the "Desi community" when it's clearly for guilty white libs https://t.co/3FfASRtRec
— Anna Khachiyan (@annakhachiyan) June 5, 2025
- "Xi [Jinping] appears to be betting that a reset in ties will lead to tangible wins in the weeks and months ahead, including tariff reductions, an easing of export controls and a generally more civil tone," reports Bloomberg. "The biggest sign of that was another round of talks that will now include US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who is in charge of curbs on the sale of advanced technology to China."
- From The New York Times: "More Federal Workers Are Flooding the Job Market, With Worsening Prospects."
- "Rising rates of antibiotic resistance means UTIs [urinary tract infections] are becoming an increasingly difficult infection to treat," reports The Cut. "Between 1990 and 2019, the number of cases worldwide increased by 60 percent. Hospitalization rates have also risen dramatically: now, the infection lands over 600,000 people in the hospital in the US every year. Though usually regarded as a nuisance, albeit a painful one, UTIs are turning into a complicated illness for a growing number of the population. It turns out the way we treat them may be part of the problem."
- "A hypersaline plume of water that contains trace amounts of radioactive isotopes from Turkey Point [Nuclear Generating Station] is seeping into an aquifer that is the primary source of drinking water for more than 3 million people," reports Bloomberg. Engineers are racing to contain this threat and restore clean water to the residents of Miami. (The full read is very interesting.)
- Useful perspective:
Fusarium graminearum already has been endemic in the US for at least four decades.
The importation of Fusarium graminearum to the US does not equate to a new introduction of the organism to the US and does not, by itself, pose a new threat to US agriculture or US security. pic.twitter.com/iuuVMBieHc
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) June 5, 2025