In news, everyone expected, Donald Trump and Elon Musk have fallen out. Even the Oval Office isn’t shaped for these two egos.
Trump has now threatened Musk’s voluminous business dealings with the federal government, which form the lifeblood of his SpaceX programme.
“The easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts,” Trump posted menacingly on his own social media website.
It began when Trump expressed surprise at Musk’s criticism of his legislation. He pushed back against the notion that he would have lost last year’s presidential election without Musk’s hundreds of millions of dollars in support and said Tesla, will be hurt by the Republican push to end electric vehicle tax credits.
Musk quickly took to his social media site, X, with a very Generation X response for his 220 million followers: “Whatever”.
The billionaire then launched a series of extraordinary attacks throughout the afternoon.
Merz
It comes as German Chancellor Merz sets the record straight after Trump tries to draw moral equivalence between Russia and Ukrainian actions:
“Ukraine is only targeting military targets. Not civilians, not private [property], not energy infrastructure. This is the difference,” Merz said.
Trump has just compared Putin’s war on Ukraine to “two young children fighting like crazy in a park … you see it in hockey.”
Reactions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
Related: Watch Trump’s tone-deaf D-Day quip—and Merz’s swift correction