By Lesedi Sibiya-Diplomatic Inside
Trouble in paradise erupts as U.S President Donald Trump and Tech-Mogul Elon Musk, as what seemed a formidable duo has now crumbled within six months of Trump’s administration. The feud between the duo started to take public stage after Trump initiated the “Big Beautiful” budget bill which aims to add $2.5 trillion to the U.S federal deficit.
The feud first erupted when Musk spoke at a CBS News interview where he criticised the bill passed by Trump and his administration and voiced his critiques further on X (Twitter) writing “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it, you know you did wrong, you know it.” Further to make matters worse between the two conglomerates, in another rant on X Musk dropped a big bombshell about the United States President by claiming that President Trump is in the notorious list of people who were involved in Jeffery Epstein’s sex trafficking ring known as the “Epstein files”; “Time to drop the really big bomb…@RealDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.” This seemed to be the stand out blow from the online feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump when he made the post on Thursday 5 June, a post which has been taken down as of Sunday 8 June. That same Thursday before Musk dropped that “bombshell” of a post President Trump spoke at the White House expressing disappointment in Elon “I’m very disappointed, because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here…He knew everything about it. He had no problem with it.” Musk has described this claim as false and expressed that the opposite was actually true; “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.” Musk wrote on X
The relationship between the two men seemed almost inseparable during Trump’s presidential campaign, with Musk even tasked with running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a department that Musk proposed that Trump implemented during an online conversation between the two powerful men on X. Since then Musk seemed to be President Trump’s right hand man, however the relationship between the two were showing cracks before it erupted onto social media with Musk constantly feuding with members in Trump’s office which aggravated Donald Trump. Risk analyst and former South African diplomat Dr Kingsley Makhubela who has warned Musk against continuing his feud with the world’s most powerful man as this could potentially ruin Musk’s business dealings and ventures in the future and could even alienate his company “SpaceX” by pulling his license for his company to operate in space. As it stands President Trump has expressed that he has no interest in repairing his relationship with Elon Musk and warns that if Musk continues talks about funding his opposition (The Democrats) then there will be “serious consequences.”