“The Trump tariffs will cause a recession in the second half of this year,” Musk wrote on X.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s alliance continues to publicly implode, with the world’s richest man taking aim at the president’s signature economic policy — tariffs — and implying he should be removed from office.
“The Trump tariffs will cause a recession in the second half of this year,” Musk wrote on X Thursday afternoon. It marks Musk’s biggest criticism yet of one of Trump’s most beloved policies.
Musk also took aim at one of the president’s most-hated political maneuvers: impeachment. Responding to another post about who would win in a fight between Musk and Trump — which also calls for Trump to be impeached and for Vice President JD Vance to replace him — Musk simply responded: “Yes.”
Trump was impeached twice by a Democratic-controlled House during his first term, but was acquitted both times by the Senate.
Musk — who’s been launching back and forth attacks with Trump all day Thursday — has never been a big fan of Trump’s sweeping tariff plans, and publicly ridiculed Peter Navarro, one of the public faces of Trump’s trade war, while he was still a government employee.
The tariffs are set to have huge implications for Musk’s car company Tesla, because of the rising costs of materials and manufacturing abroad. The car company’s stocks took a dive following the tariff announcements, and were also impacted by Musk’s growing absence from the company during his time as Trump’s special adviser while leading the Department of Government Efficiency.
That said, Musk has called Tesla the “least affected” car company from the tariffs, due to supply chains being split between Europe, China and North America. But the Tesla CEO hasn’t shied away from bashing Trump’s trade advisers in the past — even labeling Navarro a “moron.”
In addition to railing against the tariffs, Musk has spent the last three days rallying against the administration’s “big beautiful bill,” which he called “disgusting” and “pork-filled” in a flood of X posts — urging Senate Republicans to reject the mega-funding legislation.
Trump hit back early Thursday, saying he was “disappointed” by Musk’s comments.
“Elon and I had a great relationship,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I don’t know if we will anymore.”
Upon return to their respective social media sites, the two turned up the heat. What has since ensued has been a barrage of X posts from the billionaire and corresponding Truth Social posts from the president that have widened a chasm between the two — who just last Friday stood side by side at the Oval Office on Musk’s last day in the White House, as Trump thanked him for his service.
Now, Trump said Musk has a case of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a taunt usually reserved for his political opponents. He’s also floating ending all of Musk’s federal government contracts including with his company SpaceX — one of NASA’s biggest contractors.
The attacks escalated when Musk suggested that Trump would not have won the 2024 election without his help, and that Republicans would have been outnumbered in Congress.
“Such ingratitude,” Musk wrote on X, referencing the hundreds of millions he poured into Trump’s and other GOP campaigns.
Musk had a poll running at the top of his X feed asking people about forming a third party. He had suggested on Tuesday, when he took his first big shot at the Republican megabill, that he could fund campaigns to primary and potentially unseat Republicans that backed the legislation.
The SpaceX founder then dropped what he described as the “really big bomb.” Musk suggested that Trump’s name appears in records of the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and said the records “have not been made public” to conceal that fact.
In February, the Department of Justice released what it called the “first phase” of documents related to the Epstein investigation, which has been a fixation of some of the president’s supporters. It has long been public that Trump — along with other prominent figures, like Bill Clinton — are referenced in documents released in court cases surrounding Epstein. But Trump is not accused of any wrongdoing linked to Epstein.
Trump has tied Musk’s criticism of the “big beautiful bill” to the looming end of a tax credit for electric vehicles, which will also deal a blow to Tesla.
“Suddenly he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out we’re going to cut the EV mandate that’s billions and billions of dollars,” Trump said Thursday.
Musk denied Trump’s framing, reaffirming his larger criticism of the bill’s spending and the potential for it to add trillions to the national deficit over the next 10 years. The former DOGE adviser also shut down the idea that he was familiar with the “inner workings” of the bill from his time in the White House, calling that a lie.
