The White House / Flickr
Tensions between President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk escalated Thursday as the two clashed online over Trump’s new budget bill.
At the center of the dispute is Trump’s sweeping “Big, Beautiful Bill,” a budget reconciliation package that includes significant tax cuts, defunds Planned Parenthood, bans Medicaid funding for “gender transition” procedures, and expands school choice programs.
The bill also repeals controversial green energy mandates and eliminates subsidies for electric vehicles (EV) and battery plants — cuts that reportedly impact Musk’s companies, Tesla and SpaceX.
Musk, former head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), denounced the bill on X as a “disgusting abomination,” accusing the administration of “bankrupting America.”
Trump responded from the Oval Office, telling reporters he was “very disappointed in Elon” and insisted Musk “knew every aspect of the bill” and “had no problem with it” until the electric vehicle mandate was cut.
“All of a sudden he had a problem and he only developed the problem when he found out we have to cut the EV mandate, and it really is unfair,” Trump added. “We want to have cars of all types.”
Musk, however, claimed he never saw the bill and took a dig at Trump by bringing up his past interactions with Jeffrey Epstein.
One widely shared response stated: “Everyone of consequence in the business world is in the Epstein files because Epstein and Maxwell made sure they were seen and photographed… One thing is for certain, President Trump never had any business deals with Epstein or Maxwell and never accepted campaign contributions from either one of them.”
Despite the uproar, Republican leaders have consistently stood by the bill.
“I want Elon and all my friends to recognize the complexity of what we’ve accomplished here,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, said earlier this week. “This extraordinary piece of legislation – record number of savings, record tax cuts for the American people and all the other benefits in it.”
“We worked on the bill for almost 14 months,” Johnson said. “You can’t go back to the drawing board, and we shouldn’t. We have a great product to deliver here.”
The White House also submitted a formal rescissions package to Congress earlier this week, aiming to roll back $9.4 billion in previously approved spending — targeting programs flagged by the DOGE.
