President Donald Trump on Thursday called Tesla CEO Elon Musk “CRAZY” and threatened to cut his companies’ government contracts as the two men feuded over a major tax bill.
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
Musk promptly responded on X: “Go ahead, make my day.”
He later upped the ante, writing, “In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.”
In addition to leading the electric-vehicle maker Tesla, Musk’s businesses include the space exploration and satellite-communication company SpaceX, artificial-intelligence company xAI, tunnel-digger The Boring Company, tech firm Neuralink and the social media site X.
Tesla’s share price, which was already trading sharply lower, tanked after Trump’s comments.
The stunning blow-up between the world’s richest man and the president of the United States comes less than a week after they swapped compliments during an Oval Office send-off celebrating Musk’s time leading the Department of Government Efficiency.
But by Thursday afternoon, Musk was griping on X about Trump’s “ingratitude” and declaring, “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”
Musk in another post indicated support for Trump to be impeached and replaced with Vice President JD Vance.
Musk even accused the Trump administration of refusing to release records pertaining to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein because the president “is in the Epstein files.”
“The truth will come out,” Musk added. Trump has denied any involvement in Epstein’s criminal behavior, and Musk provided no evidence in his post to back up the claim.
Asked for comment by CNBC, a White House spokesman declined to comment on any of Musk’s posts targeting Trump.
Trump in his own bitter Truth Social post later Thursday wrote that Musk was “wearing thin” by the end of his tenure as a “special government employee.”
“I asked him to leave,” Trump claimed. Musk called that “an obvious lie.”
The angry swipe came after Musk blasted the president amid an escalating clash stemming from the mega-billionaire’s vocal opposition to Trump’s massive budget bill.
“I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump wrote in the social media post.
Trump said in the Oval Office earlier Thursday that Musk was “upset” that the package cuts electric vehicle credits.
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk (R) speak before departing the White House on his way to his South Florida home in Mar-a-Lago in Florida on March 14, 2025.
Roberto Schmidt | Afp | Getty Images
Musk has aggressively trashed the bill on the grounds that it will add trillions of dollars to the nation’s deficits. He is actively urging Senate Republicans to “kill the bill,” which comprises a huge swath of Trump’s domestic agenda.
Musk’s campaign against the bill has garnered support from Republican fiscal hawks. But his barrage of attacks on Trump has prompted some loyalists to leap to the president’s defense.
“Thus spake the ketamine,” former Trump advisor Steve Bannon said in a statement to NBC News later Thursday. Bannon was apparently referencing a recent New York Times report about Musk’s drug use on the 2024 campaign trail. Musk has pushed back on that report.
“People including myself are recommending to the president that he pull every contract associated with Elon Musk and that major investigations start immediately,” Bannon said.
He urged Trump to investigate Musk’s “immigration status, his security clearance and his history of drug abuse”; his “relationship with the Chinese Communist Party, including but not limited to trying to force a briefing of highly top- secret war plans with China at the Pentagon”; and “his involvement with attempting to get President Xi to the Inauguration.”
SpaceX is one of the nation’s largest federal contractors, securing $3.8 billion over hundreds of government contracts in fiscal year 2024 alone, The New York Times reported. The company has taken more than $20 billion in contracts from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and other agencies since 2008, according to data from FedScout.
A Washington Post analysis published in February found that Musk and his companies have received at least $38 billion from the government in the form of contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits over more than two decades.
Some of Musk’s companies are on track to take in additional federal dollars for years to come, either from existing contracts or from newly inked government business. SpaceX, for instance, is among frontrunners to win a crucial part of Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield plan, Reuters reported.
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— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
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