The long-simmering feud between President Donald Trump and his former ‘first buddy’ Elon Musk is showing signs of boiling over once more. Following the passing of Trump’s signature “One Big Beautiful Bill” that will offer tax breaks to the wealthy while kicking millions off of Medicaid, Musk publicly supported Senator Rand Paul’s criticism (one of the few Republican ‘no’ votes in the Senate), specifically Paul’s assertion that the bill would ‘explode the deficit.
Rand posted on X, “The Big Not-So-Beautiful Bill has officially passed both chambers. Despite a few conservative provisions, it explodes the deficit in the near term. This is Washington’s MO: short-term politicking over long-term sustainability.’ Musk reposted this comment, expressing agreement with a ‘100’ emoji, his first public statement on the bill since its official passage.
💯 https://t.co/uYnJcY4far
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 4, 2025
Musk has been criticizing the bill for some time: it marked an early point of contention in his relationship with the President, ultimately culminating in a significant public spat during which Musk accused Trump of appearing in Jeffrey Epstein’s black book (an attack he would later deleted and retracted). He previously referred to the spending bill as the “Debt Slavery Bill.” He also offered some very salient and well-reasoned critiques, like “I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both,” and “we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” Really makes you think.
Despite his significant opposition to the Big, Beautiful Bill—one so strong that he was seemingly willing to throw away his relationship with the President over it—he didn’t flex his political power, whatever of it remains, to stop it from passing. He did issue a pretty lame threat to oust the members of the Republican party who cast their vote for the bill one day before the Senate voted on it, but that reads more like jeering from the sidelines from a guy who used to be in the arena. For a guy who is online all day to only offer up a single threat and a couple of critical posts, it just feels a little phoned in.
Musk insists that his opposition to the bill comes from a place of being a true budget hawk, which maybe he is. But Trump has called him out for covering up his self-interest in opposing the legislation, as it cuts clean energy credits for solar projects and electric vehicles, which Musk’s companies would have benefited from. Musk has issued no objection to the cuts to food benefits and healthcare, by the way. Austerity is fine for everyone else, it seems.
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