Are Trump and Musk Done for Good?

0:05It was a match made in MAGA heaven, the world's richest man and the president of the United States, seemingly the best of friends. I think the word that has most commonly been used to describe their relationship this year has been bromance. Our colleague Rebecca Ballhaus has been writing about the relationship between President Trump and Elon Musk. We have seen sort of a genuine affection between the two men until recently that defied even what people had expected. For a while, there was also pretty much nowhere Trump was going where Elon wasn't going with him. I mean, every time he'd get on Air Force One, Musk was accompanying him.

0:44He would go to Mar-a-Lago with him every weekend. So they were spending a lot of time together. In February, the bromance was on full display during a Fox News interview. The two men were asked about a recent settlement between Trump and X, Musk's social media company. Trump and Musk sat down to do this joint interview with Sean Hannity on Fox. and they're sitting incredibly close together. Their knees are almost touching. They're both nodding really vigorously when the other is responding to one of his questions. And Hannity opens the interview by saying, let me just get this straight. Elon is working for you for free.

1:23He, you know, has put a lot of his life on hold and you just made him pay you$10 million? You sued Twitter a number of years ago. You just made him pay you$10 million? That's right. It's a very low. I was looking to get much more money than that. So you gave him a discount when the lawsuit... He got a... Oh, he got a big discount. And then he turns to Musk and says, and you don't care about that? And Musk basically says, no, I love the president. Why I love the president? I just want to be clear about that. You love the president. I think President Trump is a good man. And I think it was just this perfect encapsulation of, you know, for a period, it just seemed like there was really nothing that could split them apart.

2:00And they've professed sort of, like, their admiration and love for each other on social media as well, right? That's right. I think probably the most memorable version of that is when Musk tweeted that he loved Trump as much as a straight man can love another man. But last week, their close relationship seemed to have completely disintegrated. After days of simmering tension, today was an all-out brawl on social media. The breakup between two of the world's most powerful men is highlighting divisions on Capitol Hill. A blow up beyond repair. Tonight, President Trump says his partnership with Elon Musk is over.

2:43Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Monday, June 9th.

2:57Coming up on the show, has the storybook bromance between Trump and Musk come to an end?

3:17So Trump and Musk have been pretty much inseparable for the past few months. How important has this relationship been? Well, I think it's incredibly important for a number of reasons. I mean, I think, first of all, the stakes have been incredibly high for both men. I mean, for Trump, what he was getting in this new best friend was also a massive campaign donor. Oh, let me tell you, we have a new star. A star is born, Elon. Musk spent nearly$300 million on the 2024 election, most of it to elect Trump. And I think he also sort of reveled in the idea that this, you know, smart, rich man wanted to spend all this time with him.

4:02I think he was sort of attracted to the celebrity and the, you know, rocket launches and that sort of thing. And for Musk, I think, you know, in some ways the stakes were even higher in that he runs half a dozen companies that rely incredibly heavily on federal contracts and their relationships with the government. And so being in this perch of being, you know, probably for a period the most influential advisor to Trump allowed him to install allies across the administration. It put him in a position to possibly get more government contracts, have better relationships with these agencies that would be regulating him and his companies, and, you know, just gave him an enormous influence over policies that would affect his companies.

4:47And how did people inside the administration feel about Musk's influence? I think Musk rankled other people from the get-go. I mean, you have this person who doesn't have an official title or job other than this role doing the Department of Government Efficiency. He is somebody who's accustomed to sort of walking in and out of any room he wants to, to weighing in on any issue he wants to. And so for a lot of White House aides and for cabinet secretaries, it felt like he was intruding on their territory, like he wasn't going through the right protocols and was just making their lives harder. But Trump stood by Musk.

5:30He defended Doge in cabinet meetings and cheered on the agency's cuts. Then, Musk's EV company, Tesla, started facing backlash because of his efforts with Doge. There were boycotts and protests. Tesla's net income fell by 70 percent. And Trump went out of his way to help. It's pretty amazing the lengths that he went to to kind of back his friend up. I mean, they had this ceremony in front of the White House where he picked out a red Tesla, which has been very visibly parked right next to the White House for the last many weeks. And I think as of Thursday night was still parked there. But that was all an effort to kind of juice Tesla after it had taken a beating.

6:16But for all the love the two men seemed to show each other in public, Rebecca says people close to Trump and Musk didn't expect the honeymoon to last forever. They know how Trump operates when somebody else is getting a lot of attention. And I mean, for Musk in particular, because there was so much commentary about the idea that he was going to be co-president or about how much influence he was wielding, Trump is not somebody who likes to share the spotlight or who likes to, you know, ever have this idea that somebody else is intruding on his level of power. And so, you know, earlier this year when Time magazine put Musk on its cover sitting behind the Resolute desk of the Oval Office, that was really when the clock started ticking.

7:02More recently, Trump has become more vocal about another frustration with Musk. The tech CEO had promised to cut a trillion dollars in spending from the federal government. But despite slashing the federal workforce and other cost-saving measures, Musk and Doge haven't come close to hitting that mark. And so when did Trump begin to actually voice his dissatisfaction with Musk? So this didn't burst out into the open until last week, but we have heard that there were rumblings of his discontent before then. So, you know, we've heard that he has asked aides how it was that Musk was able to fall so far short of this$1 trillion in spending that he had pledged to cut for the federal government.

7:45You know, what Doge has said is that it has saved$175 billion so far. So for a couple weeks now, Trump has been saying, you know, how is it possible that he missed the mark by so much? What happened to that$1 trillion? My colleagues reported he asked some aides, quote, was it all bullshit? Last month, Musk's special employment status with the government came to an end. He said he was stepping away to focus on his businesses, but that the work at Doge would continue. Publicly, it seemed like it was an amicable departure. The White House bid Musk farewell during a press conference in the Oval Office.

8:21Musk wore a black doge hat and stood next to Trump, who was sitting at his desk. Today it's about a man named Elon, and he's one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced. He gave Musk this golden key to the White House. He praised him a lot and thanked him for his work in the government. He said there's nobody like him. And we are relentlessly pursuing$8 trillion in waste and fraud reductions, which will benefit the American taxpayer. So that's it, really. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Great job. But just days after the ceremony, things began to fall apart.

9:06Musk posted an angry rant on X about Trump's signature spending bill. It's a major part of Trump's legislative agenda, and Musk said it was way too expensive. He's called it massive. He called it outrageous. He said it's a disgusting abomination. The Post unleashed a back and forth between the two men. I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot. At a press conference in the White House, Trump said he was disappointed in Musk. People leave my administration, and they love us, and then at some point they miss it so badly and some of them embrace it and some of them actually become hostile.

9:47I don't know what it is. It's sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it. Musk responded immediately on X. He said that Trump wouldn't have won the election without him. And from there, things escalated even further. So I think by far the craziest thing that he posted is he insinuates that Trump is named in the federal investigation of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein without providing any evidence. But he says, time to drop the really big bomb and ends that post. Have a nice day, DJT. So, wow, that was pretty, I think for me, that was the moment where I thought, oh my God, this is a really big deal.

10:31And it'll be hard to come back from that one. One person familiar with Trump's relationship with Epstein said the administration has already released Epstein files that include Trump. In 2019, Trump said he had a falling out with Epstein and hadn't spoken to him in over a decade. Musk has since deleted the post. What did Trump say? So he starts to respond in the mid-afternoon, and he suggests that the easiest way to save money on the federal budget would be to end the government contracts that go to Musk's companies. And he says that he was always surprised that Joe Biden hadn't done that. He also said that he had asked Musk to leave his administration job because he was, quote, wearing thin.

11:16And he said that Musk just went, quote, crazy, exclamation point. Later that day, Musk continued to post about Trump online. Then he retweets a post that calls for Trump to be impeached and for Vice President J.D. Vance to be named president and writes yes. That, I think, Trump seemed taken aback by sort of the level of escalation there. And one more sign that things had gotten rocky is that a senior White House official said Trump is considering selling or giving away the red Tesla he bought from Musk earlier this year. And so everybody knew that this would ultimately all come crashing down, but it was still pretty shocking the way that it all happened.

12:05After the break, the potential fallout from the short-lived partnership.

12:21so let's talk about what's at stake for the end of this romance now that it seems like it's over with musk what does he stand to lose in this breakup with trump well so musk's companies Tesla, SpaceX, XAI, they have billions of dollars in government contracts. And so if Trump were actually to move forward with trying to end his contracts or reduce them, that would be a massive deal for his companies. But the other thing is that he's pushing for a lot of changes to federal regulations for Tesla, for SpaceX. He needs the government to review his plans for SpaceX for future launches. So he's really reliant on having a good relationship with the government.

13:07And so if the tide really turns for him here, that is going to make things a lot harder for a lot of his companies. Musk posted on X yesterday that, quote, whatever happens, we have got the spaceships and they do not. Meanwhile, Musk is taking aim at the GOP tax bill because he says it will increase the U.S. deficit. Trump says Musk's complaint actually has to do with the bill's cuts to EV subsidies, which could hurt Tesla. The legislation is controversial, even among Republicans, and Trump needs every vote he can get. The bill is really core to Trump's agenda. They have a small window to get things done here.

13:48And I think this tax and spending bill is, you know, a big reason why so many Republicans have supported Trump is that they see an opportunity to get this passed. And so I think it's incredibly important to Trump and to the party as a whole. Does Musk really have that kind of influence in Congress? You know, a couple of tweets saying that it's a bad bill. Is that really enough to move the needle? Yeah, it doesn't look that way so far. I think you've seen a lot of lawmakers side with Trump in this battle and not with Musk. I don't know that Musk has the ability to really derail things here. But I think the other point is that Republicans certainly want Musk's help in the midterm elections next year.

14:29And if he's going to sit this one out or, you know, support Democrats. Which he's done in the past. Right. He has a long history of supporting Democrats. And Trump, you know, acknowledged that over the weekend and threatened very serious consequences of Musk-backed Democrats in the midterms next year. So I think that Republicans are paying a very close attention to that possibility. So it feels like we're at the point kind of in the movie where there's like a big fight in the rain for the bromance. They realize they're actually meant to be together. Is there a chance, you know, where someone is actually running in the airport right before the other one boards the flight?

15:10I think running onto the tarmac of Air Force One. Or is this just going to get worse? Is this sort of the end of it? I mean, you could not pay me to make an extremely confident prediction here about how this will go. I think it's impossible to know. There were certainly signs over the weekend that Musk was trying to dial things back. He deleted his posts accusing Trump of being involved in the Epstein investigation. He posted some supportive posts of other administration priorities. is it's possible that because they both have so much to gain from their relationship that they could find a way to come back to each other.

15:51But I do think that it's hard to see the real bromance we saw unfolding return in the same way after they've thrown down like this.

16:06Trump kind of has a history of falling out with people in his inner circle and then moving on. And it seems like even the world's richest man couldn't escape that fate. Is this any different? Well, I think it's certainly different in that these two are far more equal than a lot of the situations we've seen before. I mean, Trump lashing out at a Steve Bannon or even a John Bolton. You know, these are people who they certainly don't have his level of reach in terms of audience. They don't have his level of power or money. But I think we haven't quite seen an advisor fire back at him in the same way.

16:49What are you going to be keeping an eye on moving forward on the story? Well, certainly the relationship that Musk's companies have with the government is going to be really important to watch. I think, you know, whether we see that relationship really souring will be pretty notable on a number of fronts.

17:24That's all for today, Monday, June 9th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Alex Leary, Micah Maidenberg, and Ryan Schwartz.

17:38Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Thank you.