President Trump and Elon Musk’s alliance dissolved into open acrimony on Thursday, as the two men hurled personal attacks at each other after the billionaire had unleashed broadsides against the president’s signature domestic policy bill.
“I’m very disappointed in Elon,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ve helped Elon a lot.”
As the president criticized Mr. Musk, the billionaire responded in real time on X, the social media platform he owns.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Mr. Musk wrote.
“Such ingratitude,” he added, taking credit for Mr. Trump’s election in a way that he never has before.
Mr. Musk had been careful in recent days to train his ire on Republicans in Congress, not Mr. Trump himself. But he discarded that caution on Thursday, ridiculing the president in a pattern familiar to the many previous Trump advisers who have fallen by the wayside.
What started as simply a fight over the domestic policy bill sharply escalated in just a few hours. Within minutes of one another, Mr. Trump was making fun of Mr. Musk’s unwillingness to wear makeup to cover a recent black eye, and Mr. Musk was raising questions about Mr. Trump’s competency as president.
The public break comes after a remarkable partnership between the two men. Mr. Musk deployed hundreds of millions of dollars to support Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. After Mr. Trump won, he gave Mr. Musk free rein to slash the federal work force.
And just last week, Mr. Trump gave Mr. Musk a personal send-off in the Oval Office. The president praised Mr. Musk as “one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced” and gave him a golden key emblazoned with the White House insignia. Mr. Musk promised to remain a “friend and adviser to the president.”
But now Mr. Musk, who has left his temporary role, has turned into the most prominent critic of a top presidential priority.
Mr. Musk has lashed out against the far-reaching policy bill in numerous posts on X. He has called it a “disgusting abomination,” argued that the bill would undo all the work he did to cut government spending and hinted that he would target Republican members of Congress who backed the legislation in next year’s midterm elections.
Mr. Trump on Thursday said Mr. Musk’s criticism of the bill was entirely self-interested, saying he only opposed the legislation after Republicans took out the electric vehicle mandate, which would benefit Tesla, Mr. Musk’s electric vehicle company. (Mr. Musk has previously called for an end to those subsidies.)
The president also downplayed Mr. Musk’s financial support for him during the campaign, arguing he would have won Pennsylvania without Mr. Musk, who poured much of his money and time into the critical battleground state.
Mr. Musk also on Thursday rebutted Mr. Trump’s statement that Mr. Musk “knew the inner workings of the bill better than anybody sitting here.”
“False, this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!” Mr. Musk wrote, sharing a video of Mr. Trump saying he was disappointed in Mr. Musk.