Trump Responds to Elon Musk’s Attack

President Donald Trump has responded to billionaire and former number-one ally Elon Musk, after he heavily criticized the White House’s so-called “big, beautiful bill.”

Over the weekend, Musk told CBS News that he’s “disappointed” by the price tag of the tax and spending bill, arguing that it “increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.”

“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” he added, “but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”

It was a once-rare but increasingly common moment of public disagreement between the two ultra-public figures, who had stood side by side during the contentious election last year when Trump ultimately retook the White House.

Asked about Musk’s reaction to the bill, which would indeed raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, Trump offered a word salad response.

“We have to get a lot of votes, we can’t be cutting — we need to get a lot of support,” the president told reporters on Wednesday, as quoted by USA Today, arguing that the bill would’ve lost momentum with deeper proposed cuts. “I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it.”

It’s a particularly notable inflection point for Musk, who announced that he would be stepping away from his role as a “special government employee” after months of implementing disastrous and chaotic cost-cutting measures with the help of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

“The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” he tweeted Wednesday evening.

But the White House seemed eager to move on after the increased friction with Musk. His “off-boarding will begin tonight,” a White House official confirmed to Reuters hours earlier.

However, given the power Musk has accrued in the White House, it’s unlikely the billionaire will simply vanish from the scene. As his tweet suggests, his influence will likely be felt for a long time to come.

Where all of this leaves Musk’s relationship with the president is hard to read. Trump has been left with the cleanup job and is looking to codify some of DOGE’s catastrophic budget cuts. He’s expected to send a whopping $9.4 billion rescissions package to Congress next week, proposing deep cuts to USAID — which has already been gutted by DOGE — and the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, which formed NPR and funds PBS.

Musk’s departure from the White House will come to the relief of many, including Republican lawmakers in Washington, DC, and investors in his ailing carmaker Tesla.

The mercurial CEO’s embrace of far-right ideals and his tenure in the government cutting federal funding have proven to be incredibly damaging to Tesla’s brand, sending sales off a cliff worldwide.

Trump, for his part, could certainly do with a whole lot less of Musk, whose popularity has tanked, dragging down the administration’s favorability with him.

After all, the president is certainly fully capable of sowing mayhem all by himself — without a tempestuous billionaire whispering in his ear and rebuking him in public.

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