Elon Musk is many issues: billionaire, natalist, aspiring gamer. He runs gigantic corporations and goals of colonizing Mars. However above all, Elon Musk is a poster. And as his storied relationship with President Donald Trump dissolves in actual time, by god, he’s posting by way of it.
The ensuing timeline—a chaotic, catty, incendiary voyage into the grievances of the world’s richest man with the president of the USA—needs to be enshrined as a historic artifact, a front-row seat to the obvious finish of an terribly consequential partnership.
Tensions between Musk and Trump had been steadily constructing, however they spilled into the open on Thursday. After Musk took repeated pictures on the president’s “Huge Lovely Invoice” and the trillions of {dollars} it’ll add to the deficit, Trump accused Musk of caring solely in regards to the removing of an electrical car credit score that helps Tesla and recommended their relationship had frayed.
Then got here Musk’s many, many posts on X. Between 12:19 pm ET and three:20 pm ET, Musk fired off 49 posts, reposts, or replies. That’s a mean of 1 new missive each 3.5 minutes, over a three-hour stretch.
It began merely sufficient. “No matter,” Musk posted to X at 12:19 pm ET. “Hold the EV/photo voltaic incentive cuts within the invoice, though no oil & gasoline subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), however ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK within the invoice. In all the historical past of civilization, there has by no means been laws that [sic] each large and delightful. Everybody is aware of this! Both you get a giant and ugly invoice or a slim and delightful invoice. Slim and delightful is the best way.”
Lower than half an hour later, after a couple of extra innocuous posts and in response to a video of Trump saying he would have gained Pennsylvania no matter Musk’s assist, Musk went nuclear. “With out me, Trump would have misplaced the election, Dems would management the Home and the Republicans could be 51-49 within the Senate,” he posted.
From there, Musk performed the hits: A foul pun (“Kill Invoice”). A number of “crying laughing” emojis. A nugatory quiz. Sympathetic retweets. The previous few hours have been a dash by way of Musk’s posting playbook, well-honed by way of years of being X’s proprietor and considered one of its most dedicated customers.
Trump posted too: “The simplest manner to save cash in our Finances, Billions and Billions of {Dollars}, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” he wrote on Fact Social throughout Musk’s meltdown. “Elon was ‘sporting skinny,’ I requested him to go away, I took away his EV Mandate that compelled everybody to purchase Electrical Vehicles that no person else needed (that he knew for months I used to be going to do!), and he simply went CRAZY!”
Musk responded by accusing Trump of being within the Epstein Recordsdata. (As of this writing, he’s nonetheless following that thread.) He additionally claimed that “@SpaceX will start decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft instantly,” which might deprive NASA of its most popular shuttle to the Worldwide House Station.
“I don’t thoughts Elon turning towards me,” wrote Trump on Fact Social, “however he ought to have executed so months in the past. This is without doubt one of the Best Payments ever introduced to Congress.”
“Trump needs to be impeached and JD Vance ought to exchange him,” wrote far-right X poster Ian Miles Cheong. “Sure,” Musk responded.
The very public spat between the world’s richest man and its strongest chief reveals no signal of slowing. The implications of the falling-out is also astronomical: Musk is price tons of of billions of {dollars} and has confirmed that he’s comfortable to deploy it to realize his personal political and private ends. Trump has energy to choke off a lot of Musk’s corporations from profitable authorities contracts.
It’s an unprecedented second that appears more likely to result in unpredictable locations. However no matter twists it takes, there’s at the least some assurance that they’ll occur out within the open.