Washington, DC – The ties between United States President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have seen highs and lows throughout the years.
But it all came crashing down on Thursday after months of what appeared to be an unshakable alliance in the White House.
A disagreement over Trump’s massive tax bill has escalated over the past few days, with Musk going so far as to suggest that the US president should be impeached.
In a series of social media posts, Musk launched personal attacks against Trump, culminating in a claim, made without evidence, that Trump is in the “Epstein files”.
Those documents relate to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and include travel logs and guest lists related to him and his associates. Part of the Epstein files remain secret, sparking curiosity and conspiracy theories about who might be mentioned.
Trump, meanwhile, responded with a social media fusillade of his own. He claimed he asked Musk to leave his White House role and suggested cutting the government subsidies and contracts awarded to the billionaire’s companies.
So how did the partnership between Musk and Trump collapse? And what may come next for the two men often described as the world’s richest and the world’s most powerful, respectively?
The honeymoon phase
A few months before the war of words between Musk and Trump erupted, the two seemed like an inseparable political force.
Musk had spent nearly $200m to elect Trump to a second term in 2024. Days after his successful election, Trump responded by appointing Musk to lead a newly created government cutting agency, called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Even the name of the department reflected the leeway that the billionaire investor had in Trump’s administration. The word “doge” refers to an internet meme of a dog, favoured by Musk, that became popular in 2010.
In the early weeks of Trump’s second term, Musk became one of the most prominent figures in the administration – and a lightning rod for public criticism. Under his leadership, DOGE sacked thousands of federal employees and gutted various agencies, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Musk appeared so powerful that some Democrats started to refer to him as “President Elon” to get under Trump’s skin.
But Trump and Musk presented a united front. During a Fox News interview in February, the US president and his then-adviser appeared side by side and heaped praise on one another.
“He gets it done. He’s a leader,” Trump said of Musk.
“I love the president. I just want to be clear about that,” Musk said of Trump.
Musk, who is originally from South Africa, started espousing right-wing views over the past few years and grew vocally critical of Democrats and progressives.
Those views became more prominent after he bought the social media platform Twitter, now X, in 2022. As he started to tilt rightward, he used the platform to bash irregular migration and efforts he believed aimed to police free speech, particularly with regards to identity politics and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even during Musk’s political realignment, however, he and Trump exchanged stern criticism. For example, in July 2022, Musk posted that Trump was getting to be “too old to be chief executive of anything”, much less the presidency.
He also initially backed Trump’s Republican rival in the 2024 presidential race, Ron DeSantis, even hosting the Florida governor’s campaign launch on X.
But the failed assassination attempt against Trump would cement Musk’s shift in allegiance. After a bullet grazed Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, Musk announced he would “fully endorse” the Republican leader.
He even joined Trump for a return to Butler in September of last year.
The unravelling
The cliche in politics is that there are no permanent enemies or permanent allies, only permanent interests. That appears to be the case for Trump, who has a history of firing advisers and disavowing former friends.
Musk is only the latest high-profile rupture – and one that might not come as a surprise to political observers.
The unravelling of Trump’s “bromance” with Musk comes at the tail end of a rocky few months, as rumours swirled about closed-door clashes between the billionaire and the president’s inner circle.
In April, Musk announced that he would be spending less time at DOGE. By that time, his role appeared to be diminishing, with the billionaire no longer dominating headlines or regularly appearing in the Oval Office.
Late in May, Musk criticised the White House-backed tax and budget proposal, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told the TV programme CBS Sunday Morning.
The bill cuts electri