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 means of it.
The ensuing timeline—a chaotic, catty, incendiary voyage into the grievances of the world’s richest man with the president of america—ought 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 pictures on the president’s “Huge Stunning Invoice” and the trillions of {dollars} it would add to the deficit, Trump accused Musk of caring solely in regards to the elimination of an electrical car credit score that helps Tesla and urged 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 mean 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. “Preserve the EV/photo voltaic incentive cuts within the invoice, regardless that no oil & gasoline subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), however ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK within the invoice. In your complete 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 an enormous 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 couple 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 means of Musk’s posting playbook, well-honed by means of years of being X’s proprietor and considered one of its most dedicated customers.
Trump posted too: “The best means to save cash in our Funds, Billions and Billions of {Dollars}, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” he wrote on Reality Social throughout Musk’s meltdown. “Elon was ‘sporting skinny,’ I requested him to go away, I took away his EV Mandate that pressured everybody to purchase Electrical Vehicles that no person else needed (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 Recordsdata. (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 popular shuttle to the Worldwide House Station.
“I don’t thoughts Elon turning towards me,” wrote Trump on Reality Social, “however he ought to have executed so months in the past. This is likely one of the Biggest Payments ever offered to Congress.”
“Trump ought to be impeached and JD Vance ought to change 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 exhibits no signal of slowing. The implications of the falling-out is also astronomical: Musk is price tons of 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 lots of Musk’s corporations from profitable authorities contracts.
It’s an unprecedented second that appears more likely to result in unpredictable locations. However no matter twists it takes, there’s not less than some assurance that they’ll occur out within the open.
