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President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are at war.
The tech CEO is sharing decade-old tweets from Trump about his professed fidelity to fiscal responsibility, and Trump in turn accuses Tesla owner Musk of going “crazy” after the president “took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars.”
Then Musk said that the real reason the Epstein files haven’t been released is because Trump is in them.
Yes, it’s gotten bad.
But given what Musk was tasked to do by this president, and how seriously Musk seemed to take it (and, in retrospect, how much less seriously Trump did), this fallout might have been inevitable.
And regrettable. For millions of Trump voters, MAGA was, at base, supposed to be about unprecedented opportunities.
In this century, Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and candidates like Kamala Harris, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton and John McCain were largely variations of the bipartisan established Washington order who were expected to serve it, and did.
They didn’t come to change the system. They were the system.
That cabal wanted literally anyone else to become president rather than Trump. He and his movement challenged core establishment orthodoxy on foreign policy, trade, culture, and more.
Including government spending. At the beginning of his second term, Trump created a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and appointed the richest man in the world to run it.
Musk and his team went after USAID, NPR and PBS. They wanted to inspect Fort Knox and audit the Pentagon. It was a few months of whirlwind, Goldwater-libertarian dreamland stuff.
Then that rhetoric died down. Most of it never happened. Musk’s original stated goal was to find $2 trillion in cuts. The DOGE website currently shows $180 billion in savings. The Republican-led Congress now haggles over whether or not it should codify $9.4 billion in DOGE cuts, a mere 5 percent of what Musk found.
Musk has left his post. Now he and Trump are fighting. Viciously.
In the midst of this, Trump has been promoting his “big, beautiful” spending bill that he expects congressional Republicans to pass. The House already did.
But the Republican Senator Rand Paul says he will not vote for a bill that will give America the largest debt increase in the country’s history. Republican Congressman Thomas Massie voted against it in the House, calling it a “debt bomb ticking.” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has been vocally against it, calling it “immoral,” as has Congressman Warren Davidson (R-OH).
Trump has attacked both Paul and Massie for daring to oppose the bill. Trump supporters soon joined him, many bashing Paul and Massie for daring to stand in the way of the president’s agenda.
But did Paul and Massie have a point?
On Tuesday, Musk said they did. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk posted on X. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.”
To Republicans, Musk said, “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
Paul and Massie immediately agreed, retweeting Musk’s post. Musk would share more posts breaking down why he thought the bill was fiscally irresponsible. Paul and Massie would agree with Musk’s points and make their own, which Musk shared with his 220 million followers.
Now there is a raucous debate on the right over this bill. At the grassroots level, many Trump supporters have been agreeing with Musk and respectfully disagreeing with the president.
Musk, Paul, and Massie are insisting on what DOGE promised on spending, as Trump and his allies like the Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson try to convince the MAGA faithful that none of these criticisms are valid.
Trump is doing what conventional Republican presidents do: promoting a bill that will add to the debt, promising cuts in the future. We have seen this before. Every Republican president for the last 50 years has called himself a conservative, pushed legislation he called conservative, and all of them have left office with a larger national debt. Ask George W. Bush.
MAGA was supposed to be a break from this. That was the point.
The only leaders still sticking to the MAGA script on spending are Paul, Massie, a handful of other Republicans, and Elon Musk—who appears to hate Trump’s guts right now. The feeling is clearly mutual, though a quick peace might be possible. We shall see.
How forces as powerful as Trump and Musk teamed up, then so hostilely broke up, will be one for the history books.
Whether America becomes fiscally healthier or insolvent due to overwhelming debt might be being decided right now. However unpopular it was at first, Paul and Massie were right to force this debate. Musk was right to use his massive influence to take it to a whole other level.
It’s why Donald Trump hired him in the first place.