The predictable second round of Elon Musk’s feud with Donald Trump began over the weekend as the Tesla CEO took aim at the GOP’s massive tax-and-spend bill. Specifically irking Musk (along with efforts to gut incentives to buy his cars) is the amount of money the bill would add to the $37 trillion national debt ($3.3 trillion over a decade, according to a new estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office). Trump initially kept his replies to the richest man on Earth muted, but as the South Africa-native’s broadsides piled up, the notoriously thin-skinned Republican president could no longer help himself.
Trump blew up and not only threatened to withdraw government subsidies from Musk’s companies but said he would mull whether to try and “denaturalize” Musk and deport him. Meanwhile, Musk suggested he’d support primary challenges to any Republican lawmaker who supported the bill, and returned to the idea of starting a third party—called the America Party (of course).
To make sense of all the chaos, Bloomberg national correspondent Joshua Green joins David Papadopoulos on this week’s episode of Elon, Inc. Green argues that—despite Musk’s hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of millions of social media followers (and bots)—there isn’t a huge constituency out there for a third party. Green also outlines the roots of a mini-campaign within Trump’s ultra-right wing base to get Musk deported, discusses Musk’s chances of actually convincing any lawmakers in the House (now that the Senate has passed the bill) to change their vote on Trump’s tax bill and predicts how many more rounds are left between him and his (one-time) biggest campaign donor.
Papadopoulos also calls up Musk reporter Dana Hull to talk about about fresh challenges for Tesla. With several recent high-profile leadership exits, a flawed robotaxi rollout and sagging sales, things aren’t looking rosy for the electric carmaker ahead of tomorrow’s quarterly sales numbers. “They might only sell like a million and a half units this year; that’s like a far cry from the 20 million that they once talked about” Hull notes.
Finally, Trump wasn’t the only subject of a Musk feuds this week. Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum recently threatened legal action against SpaceX due to debris from a rocket explosion sweeping in across the border from Texas. Is Musk’s space technology company ready for a spat with one of the few world leaders who has managed to tame Trump? Bloomberg Executive Editor Crayton Harrison joins for the full story.
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