For a while, the interests of President Trump and Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk aligned. Trump entered his second presidential term waging war on the “deep state” of bureaucrats who keep the $6 trillion federal government functioning. Musk envisioned a technocratic elite running the country with algorithms, ruthless efficiency, and a skeleton crew of functionaries. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that Musk ran for five months was a marriage of expediency that seemed to suit both men’s purposes.
The Trump-Musk alliance is now over.
Trump wants symbolism. Musk wants revolution. So far, Trump is the one getting his way. But Musk is shaping up as a formidable opponent, and a colossal showdown is underway.
Musk is now trying to kill the big tax-cut bill in Congress, which is one of Trump’s top policy priorities. Lord knows, Musk isn’t opposed to tax cuts. But his mission at DOGE was to cut trillions of dollars of federal spending and reduce the gargantuan national debt. The tax-cut bill would make token spending cuts while increasing the debt by at least $2.5 trillion.
Musk seems to feel duped.
Just days after winding down his role at the DOGE commission, Musk called the tax-cut bill a “disgusting abomination.” He’s now crusading to kill the bill, posting on June 4, “Bankrupting America is NOT ok.” Musk has also begun trolling Trump on his social media platform, X, reposting Trump tweets from more than a decade ago in which a pre-presidential Trump sounds like a fiscal curmudgeon.
In one 2012 post that Musk resurfaced, Trump says “deficits not allowed!” “I couldn’t agree more,” Musk responded on June 5, 2025.
Duped? Elon Musk speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, on Feb. 20, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
Trump is keeping mum and practicing restraint. Haha, no he’s not! Trump is counterattacking, saying at the White House on June 5, “Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore.” He suggested that Musk turned on his bill because it might end up canceling tax credits for electric vehicles that benefit Tesla.
Trump also said Musk has known about everything in the tax-cut bill for weeks, which Musk denies. “False,” Musk posted on June 5. “This bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night.”
Trump then executed a trippy inverse-DOGE maneuver, posting on his own social media network that the government could save billions by canceling contracts that go to Musk’s companies, presumably SpaceX, which is a big NASA and Defense Department contractor. Musk suggested he might start a new political party that could siphon off Trump’s centrist supporters.
This is obviously scintillating political theater that could dominate headlines for as long as it continues. But the real question is whether Musk actually has enough influence to change or kill the tax-cut bill, which the House of Representatives has passed and the Senate is now working on.
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Ordinarily, there would be no chance that a lone CEO would be able to tank legislation backed by a US president whose party controls both houses of Congress. No CEO would even try. But Musk obviously considers himself a unique breed of warrior CEO, and he could get some traction in his effort to kill Trump’s bill.
Trump and Musk have ruptured because their brief alliance masked very divergent missions. Trump let Musk’s DOGE rampage through the federal bureaucracy because it generated the headlines he wanted. Musk, with Trump’s blessing, attempted to dismantle a sprawling institution many Trump supporters consider a failure.
They cheered Musk and his chainsaw.
Trump clearly underestimated how serious Musk is about real government reform, which is not something Trump especially cares about. Trump wants loyalists in key positions and unbridled power, not the technocracy Musk has in mind. Trump has never articulated a serious plan to right-size government or cut deficit spending. The evidence is right there in the lamely named “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” So far, the bill includes hardly any of the cuts DOGE is pushing for. Worse, it would add at least $2.4 trillion to the national debt.
Shunned by Republicans in Congress, Musk is now turning his chainsaw on them, with Trump sure to receive some nicks as well.
Musk doesn’t exactly have a political constituency of his own. But he has many millions of social media followers, and he’s a kind of demigod for iconoclastic libertarians in the Joe Rogan mold. Musk now claims Trump wouldn’t have won the 2024 presidential election without his money and support, and it could be true that Musk influenced centrist independents in the seven swing states that put Trump over the top.
Beware the chainsaw: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) talks about his conversations with Elon Musk this week as he meets with reporters to discuss work on President Trump’s bill of tax breaks and spending cuts at the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
Those types of voters are the very Americans most disgusted by budgetary recklessness that both Democrats and Republicans have practiced for the past 25 years. Republicans, including the current party of Trump, have repeatedly cut taxes, and Democrats have repeatedly piled on benefits. Yet neither party has done anything to stop the borrowing, with the national debt now at a whopping $36.2 trillion and only heading higher.
The Moody’s rating agency just became the third to downgrade the US debt rating. Bond markets have been unusually wobbly this year, signaling that the US Treasury might finally be issuing more debt than global financial markets are willing to absorb. It’s a lousy time to pass new legislation that will make the debt situation even worse.
If Musk can arrest this process and actually kill the bill, it probably won’t happen through some kind of social media uprising against Trumpism.
What Musk is doing, however, is providing top cover for small numbers of fiscally conservative Republicans who don’t want to vote for a bill that adds to the national debt. Very few Republicans are willing to buck Trump alone. But now here’s Musk, Trump’s own cost-cutter in chief, who is wooing them away from Trumpism with Muskism. Trump can sink Republican careers by attacking those who oppose him, but maybe Musk will offer a counterweight in the form of bottomless political donations and social media endorsements.
Many congressional Republicans were happy when Musk wound down his DOGE work and left Washington, figuring DOGE would go out with a whimper and they could carry on with business as usual.
But DOGE is now coming for Congress too. Trump must be wondering what he unleashed.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman.
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