Trump Fires Back at Musk

"I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot," President Trump said Thursday, firing back after the billionaire spent days heavily criticizing the "Big Beautiful Bill." Musk has called the bill a "disgusting abomination," pointing to the increase in the federal deficit, but Trump said Musk opposed it for personal reasons, CNBC reports. "Elon is upset because we took the EV mandate, and you know, which was a lot of money for electric vehicles," Trump said. The president downplayed Musk's contributions to his campaign, saying he would have won Pennsylvania even without the help of Musk, who spent around $250 million on the campaign, reports the AP.

• Trump, speaking during an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, spoke about his friendship with Musk in the past tense, the New York Times reports. "Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will anymore," he said. "He hasn't said bad about me personally, but I'm sure that'll be next."
• Trump compared Musk to other people who became "hostile" after leaving the White House. "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," he said, per the New York Post. I don't know what it is, it's sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it."

• Musk fired back on X as the president was speaking. "Whatever," he said in one post. "Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill."
• "I'm very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill," Trump said. "He never had a problem until right after he left." In another post, Musk responded, "False, 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!"

(More Elon Musk stories.)