Elon and Trump Break Up In Spectacular Fashion. What’s Next?

Coming up for Musk’s businesses: Hurdles for Tesla, SpaceX, and more after Musk and Trump’s nuclear fallout.

Up until Thursday afternoon, Elon Musk’s split with Donald Trump was cordial. Despite an underwhelming stay in the White House, Musk said plenty of nice things about Trump upon leaving and Trump returned the favor. The conventional wisdom was both needed each other too much for the relationship to implode. The campaign money, the government contracts, and the mutually reinforcing celebrity were too valuable to light on fire.

Now, it’s all up in flames.

In a dizzying barrage of social media posts on Thursday afternoon, the two men detonated their relationship. It’s now permanently damaged and we’ll be talking about the fallout for months, if not years.

Here’s how it went down and the likely implications for Musk, his companies, and Silicon Valley:

Trump began the exchange on Thursday telling reporters he was “very disappointed with Elon” due to his criticism of the ‘Big Beautiful’ spending bill. Musk’s been loudly critical of the debt the bill would add to the national deficit. Trump’s rebuke expanded the conflict when he said Musk wasn't necessary for his election victory and only opposed the bill due to its EV policies, which could hurt Tesla.

Musk hit back, taking full credit for Trump’s victory in a post on X. “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.” Musk said. “Such ingratitude.”

Given Trump’s obsession with his election victories, that crossed a red line for the President (though Musk would cross another, more soon) and Trump didn’t let it go.

“Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ Trump then wrote on Truth Social. “I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!”

Musk first responded by calling Trump a liar. “Such an obvious lie,” he said on X. “So sad.” And then took the confrontation nuclear. “Time to drop the really big bomb,” Musk posted. “@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”

Holy. Mother. Of. Goodness.

Elon Musk’s companies have billions at stake with U.S. government contracts, subsidies, reputation, and regulatory issues. This is what might come next: