Elon Musk is many issues: billionaire, natalist, aspiring gamer. He runs gigantic companies and dreams of colonizing Mars. However above all, Elon Musk is a poster. And as his storied relationship with President Donald Trump dissolves in actual time, by god, he’s posting by it.
The ensuing timeline—a chaotic, catty, incendiary voyage into the grievances of the world’s richest man with the president of the US—needs to be enshrined as a historic artifact, a front-row seat to the obvious finish of an extraordinarily consequential partnership.
Tensions between Musk and Trump had been steadily constructing, however they spilled into the open on Thursday. After Musk took repeated photographs on the president’s “Massive Stunning Invoice” and the trillions of {dollars} it would add to the deficit, Trump accused Musk of caring solely concerning the removing of an electrical car credit score that helps Tesla and advised their relationship had frayed.
Then got here Musk’s many, many posts on X. Between 12:19 pm ET and three:20 pm ET, Musk fired off 49 posts, reposts, or replies. That’s a median of 1 new missive each 3.5 minutes, over a three-hour stretch.
It began merely sufficient. “No matter,” Musk posted to X at 12:19 pm ET. “Maintain the EV/photo voltaic incentive cuts within the invoice, despite the fact that no oil & gasoline subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), however ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK within the invoice. In your entire historical past of civilization, there has by no means been laws that [sic] each massive and exquisite. Everybody is aware of this! Both you get a giant and ugly invoice or a slim and exquisite invoice. Slim and exquisite is the way in which.”
Lower than half an hour later, after a number of extra innocuous posts and in response to a video of Trump saying he would have received Pennsylvania no matter Musk’s assist, Musk went nuclear. “With out me, Trump would have misplaced the election, Dems would management the Home and the Republicans could be 51-49 within the Senate,” he posted.
From there, Musk performed the hits: A nasty pun (“Kill Invoice”). A number of “crying laughing” emojis. A nugatory quiz. Sympathetic retweets. The previous few hours have been a dash by Musk’s posting playbook, well-honed by years of being X’s proprietor and one in every of its most dedicated customers.
Trump posted too: “The simplest means to economize in our Finances, Billions and Billions of {Dollars}, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” he wrote on Fact Social throughout Musk’s meltdown. “Elon was ‘carrying skinny,’ I requested him to go away, I took away his EV Mandate that pressured everybody to purchase Electrical Automobiles that no one else wished (that he knew for months I used to be going to do!), and he simply went CRAZY!”
Musk responded by accusing Trump of being within the Epstein Information. (As of this writing, he’s nonetheless following that thread.) He additionally claimed that “@SpaceX will start decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft instantly,” which might deprive NASA of its most well-liked shuttle to the Worldwide House Station.
“I don’t thoughts Elon turning towards me,” wrote Trump on Fact Social, “however he ought to have finished so months in the past. This is among the Best Payments ever offered to Congress.”
“Trump needs to be impeached and JD Vance ought to substitute him,” wrote far-right X poster Ian Miles Cheong. “Sure,” Musk responded.
The very public spat between the world’s richest man and its strongest chief reveals no signal of slowing. The results of the falling-out may be astronomical: Musk is value a whole bunch of billions of {dollars} and has confirmed that he’s pleased to deploy it to attain his personal political and private ends. Trump has energy to choke off a lot of Musk’s firms from profitable authorities contracts.
It’s an unprecedented second that appears prone to result in unpredictable locations. However no matter twists it takes, there’s a minimum of some assurance that they’ll occur out within the open.
