Elon Musk and Donald Trump in the Oval Office. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
It was just after 10 a.m. on Thursday when Donald Trump, seated beside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in his golden Oval Office, was asked by a reporter about Elon Musk’s attacks on his so-called "big, beautiful" spending bill. “Elon and I had a great relationship,” Trump said, noticeably subdued. “I don’t know if we will anymore.”
Soon after, Musk made sure of it.
The unhinged billionaire logged on to his social platform to first needle Trump over the bill—calling it a “debt slavery bill” and wondering aloud what happened to the version of Trump who used to rail against reckless federal spending (of course, Trump's record has shown he doesn’t actually care much about the national debt). But the tone quickly darkened. Musk took credit for thrusting Trump and the Republican Party back into power in 2024, blasting the president for his "ingratitude." He agreed with an X user that Trump should be impeached and replaced with J.D. Vance. And then—seemingly out of nowhere—Musk opted to go thermonuclear, dropping a "big bomb" that Trump’s name is supposedly in the government’s Jeffrey Epstein sex abuse investigative files. It was an extraordinary escalation that struck at the heart of the MAGA-embraced conspiracy theory that powerful pedophiles have escaped justice, and one that made clear this wasn’t just a friendly spat that could be walked back in a few days. It was a supernova of a breakup.
Trump, predictably, hit back just as hard, accusing Musk of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and indicating that he will not hesitate to pull the levers of government to hurt Musk’s businesses, which rely on its lucrative contracts (so much for Trump believing in free speech!). But Musk, undeterred, kept swinging.
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David Zaslav. (Photo by Phillip Faraone/VF25/Getty Images for Vanity Fair)
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