The war of words between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, his biggest donor in the 2024 election, intensified on Thursday after the president responded to Musk’s criticisms of his major budget bill.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Musk opposed the bill because “we took the EV mandate.”
“They’re having a hard time, the electric vehicles, and they want us to pay billions of dollars in subsidy,” Trump said, adding that he was “very disappointed” in Musk.
Musk fired back.
“Whatever. 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,” the billionaire wrote in a post on X. “In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this! Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill. Slim and beautiful is the way.”
Musk also denied Trump’s claim that “he [Musk] knew every aspect of this bill…..and he never had a problem until right after he left.”
“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!” Musk wrote.
Musk has been railing against the bill since Sunday when he told CBS, “I was like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not decrease it and undermines the work the DOGE team is doing. I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful. But I don’t know if it can be both.”
He doubled down on Tuesday issuing a direct take down of the bill, calling it a “disgusting abomination.”
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote in a post on X. “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.”
Musk also vowed to “fire” every politician “who betrayed the American people” by voting for the bill.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, estimates that the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade while forcing 11 million Americans off health care.
