Elon, Inc.Emergency Episode: Elon and Trump Are Breaking Up in Public. What Happens Next?
Minutes after Trump accused Elon of having "Trump Derangement Syndrome" and Elon claimed "Without me, Trump would have lost the election," we are joined by Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Josh Green for a special emergency podcast to talk about whether this breakup will last. Could Elon and Trump reconcile over a less big, less beautiful tax bill? Could Elon flip parties again and join the Democrats? We game out the possibilities.
Let me tell you we have a new star.
A star is born Elon pumped up on Mars Utson Kennedy.
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy.
I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does. But those two percent that are nasty, they are out.
They in four.
Post We are meant for great things in the United States of America, and Elon reminds us of that we don't have a fourth branch of governments called Elon Musk.
Welcome to Elon, Inc.
Max Chafkin here joining you for a special emergency edition of the podcast. It's about one o'clock on Thursday, as June fifth, as we're recording this, and Donald Trump has been making comments about Elon Musk in the Oval Office. They were so explosive, so negative, that we wanted to get here quickly and talk about them. If you've been listening to the podcast, the question of how long will this relationship last? How long can these two men who have different egos, different ideological points of view, has been kind of something we've talked about for basically a year and we have been saying all along, at least I have been saying that they need each other and that for all of the kind of tension and some of the signaling that we've seen on Twitter or whatever from Musk, that it's basically no big deal. And I have to say David Papadopolis, who has been taking the opposite position, looking a little bit more like he was right on this one, wanted to bring in Josh Green, Bloomberg BusinessWeek political reporter, friend of the show, author of The Devil's Bargain to talk about this.
Josh, how are you doing?
Doing great? Just sitting down here in DC amidst all the drama.
As somebody on Twitter said, it's like we've reached the mom and dad or screaming at each other in the car.
Phase of the divorce. So it's a really exciting moment to be joining.
You, all right, So about that, So let's just first of all, Trump is in the Oval with Friedrich Murrz, the new Chancellor of Germany. He's getting asked all sorts of questions about Vladimir Putin and so on, and then someone asked him about Elon Musk, who has you know, basically for three four days now, just been essentially tweeting NonStop about how the big beautiful bill, as Trump calls it, I guess that's the formal name, how terrible it is. And let's listen to a little bit about what Trump had to say about that.
He knew every aspect of this bill. He knew it better than almost anybody, and he never had a problem until right after he left. And if you saw these statements he made about me, which I'm sure you can get very easily, it's very fresh on tape. He said the most beautiful things about me, and he hasn't said bad about me personally, but I'm sure that'll be next. But I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elan a lot.
It would have been possible, I guess, for Elon to try to kind of patch things up here, but instead he has been going off on Twitter. He actually responded to this one, saying false, this bill was never shown to me even once, and was passed in the dead of night, so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it. A little bit later, he said Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House, and Republicans would be fifty one forty nine in the Senate. You know, Trump has kept talking. Let's listen to one more clip.
He's not the first people leave my administration, and they love us, and then at some point they miss it so badly, and some of them embrace it, and some of them actually become hostile. I don't know what it is. It's sort of Trump derangement syndrome. I guess they call it. But we'd have it with others too. They leave, and they wake up in the morning and the glamour's gun, the whole world is different, and they become hostile. I don't know what it is. Someday you'll write a book about it, and you'll let us know.
Josh, you have written about this extensively, the extent to which people in Trump's orbit can sometimes become quote hostile, as President calls. It's what's kind of your reaction to this? I mean, I feel like you all along have been predicting this, and I think all along I've been saying I I don't know, and here we are. I feel like that your predictions have finally been born out.
Yeah.
I mean like they certainly have, just by the evidence of the last forty eight hours.
But I don't want to.
I don't want to spike the football because I thought this would happen back in like January. Like I'm I'm still amazed that the bromance lasted as long as it did, because as we're now seeing play out in the ugliest form in Twitter and in the Oval Office, both of these guys have tremendous egos. They have to be the main character. There isn't room for a co star. And you know, Elon is hurt. I think that the Doge effort was largely a failure. Now he's going back to deal with his private companies, including Tesla, that are reeling.
He's obviously nursing wounds over.
Over some of the in the big beautiful Bill, and it's just decided to have a big, ugly public tantrum.
About it, which is kind of what we come to expect from him.
Yeah, and Trump mentioned this, I mean, he said, Elon's problem with the bill is these ev subsidies. These are the tax credits that essentially made Tesla's cars and the cars of other EV makers cheaper.
And Trump's right. He was on the.
Campaign trail saying this, like every single day, we're gonna end the ev mandate. We're gonna end the ev mandate. And somehow Elon Musk like looked past it or something. It's it's a very it's a strange thing.
Trump also said that.
The reason he pulled Jared Jared Isaacman's nomination the nomination for the head of NASA was because this is a friend of Elon Musk and he thought it was inappropriate. So so it's kind of like, both these guys are now discovering things that I think we're sort of obvious all along.
Yeah, you know, I think that's right.
I mean, the other the other factor about the v Man eights is I believe at some point Elon was asked about this and indicated he was fine with it, you know, back back when the stuff was bouncing around during the campaign. You know, I think he's sort of grasping for any weapon in hand to try and criticize Trump and express his deep unhappiness over I guess how his tenure went in Washington, what his relationship with Trump and the Trump.
White House is like.
And I think really what he wasn't able to accomplish. Remember, he went in originally's going to cut a trillion dollars, and he came out in Madison Square Garden and said no, no, no, two trillion dollars. And you know, the first legislative manifestation of those cuts is about to come before Congress and it's a pitdlling nine billion dollars and it's not even clear that that's going to pass. I mean, they're talking about wiping out NPR and Big Bird in Sesame Street, and even that might not get over the finish line. So I think it kind of underscores the degree to which Elon has failed in the goals that he set out for himself. And again that public failure is just sort of spilling out across Twitter.
I think he does care about these EV mandates.
And my take, and I should say, Elon, in this barrage of tweets that he's been firing off over the last hour, so did say, whatever, keep the EV in solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil.
Gas subsidies are touched.
Parentheses, very unfair, double exclamation point, but ditch the mountain of disgusting pork all in all caps in the bill. So he's saying, look, I'm willing to let the EV subsidies slide. I do think, Josh, that there's been a change, because back when Elon was sort of okay with this tesla's finances looked way way better, and now you have this like huge demand problem, the idea that he's facing having to make his cars seventy five hundred dollars more expensive, which is the potential upshot. I think I think the state of play has changed maybe a little bit, and that could be part of it.
But I also think you're right.
I mean, he just he you know, he set up almost this impossible task for himself. You know, there were lots of people at the time saying there's no way he's ever going to be able to cut two trillion or one trillion or even less than that. And now like he sort of confronted with the essential failure of this Doge project.
Yeah, he has.
And there's been a movement on the right in MAGA circles among Elon's enemies for a few weeks now.
He was surely ramped up in the last forty eight hours.
Steve Bannon on his podcast yesterday was saying, Elon, you promised us freight fraud, waste and interviews show us the receipts. There's no fraud that meaningful fraud we can detect in Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, like show.
Us the goods.
And I think another reason the big Beautiful Bill is so fat and ugly, as Elon put it was he just wasn't able to come up with these compensating cuts. And so you have the Congressional Budget Office coming out yesterday and saying, yes, this bill is going to add two point four trillion dollars to the deficit. So in terms of an offset for all the spending that that Trump and Republicans want, they were really counting on Elon to deliver that and he failed.
Yeah, County, Like pretty unrealistic. But yes, I mean again, like I know, he's sort of left holding the bag. I mean in terms of in terms of blame. And now you can see all of these people like Bannon, like you know, trump allies in Congress kind of turning on him and making him out to be the bad guy. Okay, Josh, let's talk about where this goes. I mean, this is going to continue to unfold. We'll talk about this at length, I know, you know, on future podcasts, but they're so sort of seemed like two possibilities to me. Like, one is they could patch things up at some point, you know, Trump and.
Even though they're even though they're you.
Know, at each other's you know, to see each other on Twitter, Trump was kind of saying he hasn't been attacking me. There seems to be just the faintest crack for them to somehow reconcile, though it seems like it's getting harder and harder by the minute. The other thing is like, could eln embrace the Democrats or does he just sort of ally with the kind of super hard right deficit Hawk Thomas Massey ran a faction of the Republican Party, like I assume, and he's he's sort of said like he's gonna throw the bums out. Sounds like he's still gearing up to spend money during the midterm, but like where does that money go?
Yeah, it's not exactly clear to me. I'm not sure it's clear to him either.
I mean, he just started having an emotional crisis, like, you know, loud and proud out across exit.
Twitter for all of us, all of us to see. I mean, I personally have thought that like the devastating.
Move that some trollish, enterprising, high profile Democrat would make is to get out there, like right now and start publicly banging the drums and saying, these ev tax credits are good, we need to get them back in the bill and get rid of those oil and gas credits and see if you could kind of tempt Elon into jumping over to your side and maybe attacking Elon even more.
Maybe somebody like a.
Gavin Newsom or a Rama manual or somebody out there who's.
Good at rokana even who's kind of doing it just the tiniest bit, although you know, I'm not sure that he's on the level of the Yeah, I don't.
Think Roquoid has the fire in the belly and the kind of like implicit trollish personality that would be required to kind of carry this off at the highest level, because you would also need to kind of anger Trump and turn this into like a big fight, like a big thing.
But it's it's it's certainly doable.
I mean, I've been getting texts like all day long from Democrats being like, oh my god, I can't believe this is happening.
They've finally broken up.
Mom and dad are fighting Washington is riveted, So ain't could kind of happen from this point on?
Yeah, and I I don't think what you're suggesting is crazy. He's fickle and and he you know, he will go where, you know, where he sees advantage. And I think the one issue, the one thing that's kind of stopping this is that he's carving out an ideological position that is pretty incompatible with like Gavin Newsom.
It's like, hey, we need to cot Medicaid more.
It's not so So that's the That's that's what makes me wonder if maybe there is a chance of a reconciliation.
Well, look, I would.
Say on the on the policy front, I mean Elon, like Trump, doesn't seem to be a man of like fixed principles when it comes to like the full panoply of like yet US public policy that cares. Certainly cares about ev mandates. You know, that's that's important for his business. But you know, whether he could be tempted to come around and maybe forswear Medicaid cuts.
For something else, you know, who knows.
I think the bigger problem for Democrats is that if you sidle up to Elon Musk, you can anger a lot of the base because Musk is now I think even more unpopular among Democratic voters, and Donald Trump himself is. And we saw the fall out of that in Wisconsin Supreme Court raised a couple of months ago.
Yeah, and we and you know, it's possible that he's just going to find himself in some kind of weird, uncanny valley where no one likes him, where the Trump voters are mad at him, the Democrats are mad at him.
That's where my money would Yeah.
He I just just one more piece of late breaking news. He has stopped following Trump advisor Stephen Miller on X.
Oh my god.
Well that that's I mean, that was his greatest ally and perhaps his last ally in the Truff administration. So that is that is quite a blow, and that will lead to all sorts of gossip in Washington about whether it's just to fallout with Trump or whether there's some other story behind the scenes. We're not privy too about why Steven Miller would be so angry at elon Musk.
Now.
I'm sure we will talk about all that more on a later episode.
Josh Green, thanks for joining us. I really appreciate it all.
It's pleasure.
This episode was created, produced, conceived, supervised by Magnus Hendrickson, our supervising producer, edited by Anamazakis. Our executive producer is Brendan Francis Newnham Stage Bauman Heads Bloomberg Podcast. If you like this episode, please rate and review it. We will really appreciate it and we will see you at our regularly schedule time next week
