June 11, 2025 • 16 mins
Elon Musk and Donald Trump were once political partners – sharing praise, power and ice-cream parties. Now the pair have been trading insults on their own social media networks.
In what started with Musk’s opposition to the president’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”, that proposes extensive tax cuts, the feud has sparked threats that could ground NASA missions and blow holes in the US federal budget.
Today, tech and power reporter for The Guardian, Nick Robins-Early, on the break-up and the dangers of handing critical services to a single billionaire.
If you enjoy 7am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at 7ampodcast.com.au/support.
Socials: Stay in touch with us on Instagram
Guest: Tech and power reporter for The Guardian, Nick Robins-Early.
Photo: EPA / Will Oliver
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven Am.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump were once political partners, sharing praise,
power and ice cream parties. Now the pair have been
trading insults on their own social media networks. In what
(00:22):
started with Musk's opposition to the President's so called Big
Beautiful Bill that proposes extensive tax cuts, the feud has
spilled over into threats that could ground NASA missions and
blow holes in the US federal budget. Today, Tech and
power reporter for The Guardian, Nick Robins early on the
breakup and the dangers of handing critical services to a
(00:43):
single billionaire. It's Thursday, June twelfth.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's sort of Trump derangement syndrome. I guess they call it,
but we have it with others. Do they leave and
they wake up in the morning and that Lammer's gone,
The whole world is different, and they become hustle. I
don't know what it is. Someday you're right.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
About so, Nick, I thought we should begin at the
moment that you think that tensions in the relationship between
Elon Musk and President Trump first became evident.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yeah, it's a bit tough to pinpoint an exact moment,
but they have been on good terms for a long time.
Even as he had a lot of conflict with other
members of the administration, it seemed like Trump would defend
him and that they would actually kind of keep going
(01:47):
with their happy friendship. But when things began to fray,
it seemed as if it was right around the time
that Musk was on his way out of the administration,
and there was a few things as he left that
seemed to start a rift between them.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
President Trump, meanwhile, has withdrawn the nomination of Jared Isaacman
to be the next NASA administrator. A White House spokesperson
set a replacement will be announced soon and says the
next leader of NASA must quote be in complete alignment
with President Trump's America First agenda.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
One of those things was that his preferred choice for
the new head of NASA was repealed, and behind the scenes,
that was something that Musk cared quite a bit about.
And then when things really got a little bit more
openly contentious, was the beginning of the spat over Trump's
(02:47):
Big Beautiful tax bill, as he calls it.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
The tension is mounting over President Trump's Big beautiful bill, as.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Connor The bill, which would extend Trump's twenty seventeen tax cuts,
would balloon the deficit two point four trillion dollars over
the next decade.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
The analysis elon. Musk continues slamming President Trump's budget bill.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Yesterday, he posted on x calling on members of Congress
to quote kill the bill.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
The initial bust up came after Musk was giving an
interview with CBS News and he disparaged the tax bill essentially,
I think I think a bill can be can be
can be big, or it can be beautiful.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I don't know if it could be both my postal opinion.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
He followed that up with some harsher words later calling
it I think an abomination, and that was the big
first salvo in this fight. Right after that, Trump was
having a meeting with the new German Chancellor and he
was asked about Musk's statements, and he hit back saying
(03:56):
that he was disappointed in Musk.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I'm very disapp I've helped ilan a lot.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
He claimed that musk knew everything that was in the
bill or.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Everything about it. He had no problem with him. All
of a sudden, he had a problem, and he only
developed the problem when he found out that we're going
to have to cut the ev mentate because it's billions
and billions of dollars.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
And that he was essentially committing an active betrayal by
criticizing what was in the bill and the bill's effect
on the national deficit.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
And as things escalated, we had insults, but then we
heard actual threats as well, Trump suggesting that he could
cancel all of Musk's government contracts and subsidies. Can you
talk to me about that?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
And Musk's response, Yeah. Initially everybody began paying attention because
they were really going after each other with extremely barbed insults.
There was Musk insinuating that Trump was affiliated with Free
Epstein to the point that he was in the Epstein files.
But it went from that sort of name calling into
(05:07):
those genuine threats of tangible reprisals. And then Trump fired
back by saying that he could cancel all of Musk's
government contracts.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Oh, we'll take a look at everything and everything. He's
got a lot of money. It's a lot of subsidy.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
So we'll take a look at that, which would be
a huge deal for Musk. Musk has extensive contracts through
SpaceX and his various other companies, and to cancel those
would be just devastating for Musk's tech empire. Musk then
shot back by saying that he would decommission SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft,
(05:49):
which is an incredibly integral spacecraft for NASA and for
reaching the International Space Station. It would essentially disable the
US's immediate ability to get anything to and from the
space station.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
He ended up walking that back, though, what does that
tell you, Well.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
He did walk it back, and he actually walked it
back after not that long of a period of time.
It seems like that that is emblematic of the fact
that Musk has a lot to lose in this fight.
It seems like that they are in a period of
sort of mutually assured destruction in some ways, but in
(06:30):
other ways. Trump is still the president, He still has
enormous executive power, and Musk is very very intertwined with
the government and his businesses are very intertwined with the government.
After this dust up, Agan, you saw things like Tesla's
stock begin to plunge because investors thought, well, he's benefited
(06:55):
from this relationship, and if this goes south, then we
don't know what will happen. Maybe regulators will begin targeting
Tesla more. Maybe Tesla will no longer have sort of
a favorable pride of place in the White House the
way that Donald Trump was previously acting as a essentially
car salesman on the White House lawn for them. And
(07:17):
so I think that his walk back showed that perhaps
there was hesitation over following through threats that would be
damaging to his empire.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Trump, maybe the president, but Elon Musk could derail the
country's space program. That's after the break, Nick, can we
talk a bit more about just how interconnected Musk and
his business empire is with the US government. Tell me
(07:55):
about I suppose where the relationship starts and how large
it's become.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
I think it's important to go back a little bit
before even all of his interconnected work with DOGE and
him becoming a senior advisor to Trump. You know, he
obviously donated three hundred million dollars to Trump's reelection campaign efforts.
But if you walk back further than that, he's been
intertwined with the government for a really long time, and
(08:23):
going back to around two thousand and six, two thousand
and eight, he was already integrating SpaceX into NASA through contracts.
Over the increased privatization of the US space program, especially
with SpaceX, he's become intertwined to the point where there
are now almost two decades later, fifteen billion dollars plus
(08:48):
in contracts later immense interconnectedness between NASA and SpaceX. SpaceX
is responsible for so much of NASA's operations and transport missions.
They're integral to future plans of moon landings and Musk's
favorite topic of reaching Mars. It's really a sort of
(09:10):
symbiotic relationship that has evolved, and the US has really
come to rely on Musk for a ton of different
satellite communications, space travel, etc.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Etc. So as these two men feud, then is there
a risk that the entire US space program could collapse?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I mean, if Musk was to follow through on threats
or if this really deteriorates, certainly significant portions of it,
and definitely plans for the future would really become at risk.
Had Musk, for instance, decommissioned that Dragon spacecraft, the US
just wouldn't have had any other immediate means of getting
(09:52):
to the International Space Station apart from essentially begging Russia
to help. It just wouldn't have been a a viable
situation for how NASA could still operate, and if Musk
was to hold hostage and threaten various other elements of
(10:13):
the space program, then it would yeah, derail major, major
plans for the future of space travel in the US.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
It's interesting because, as you say, one way of looking
at this is to see Trump is the one who
holds the most power here as the president of the
United States, but has he in fact handed a lot
of that power over now to Musk. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
I think that some people that I have talked to
have described Musk, through Doge and through his company's work
with the government as just collecting an enormous amount of
state capture. And since he is running these businesses with
a certain kind of autocratic flair over what he decides
(10:57):
to do with them, it means that whenever there is
some major government program or major government desire to get
something done, that they are really reliant on his cooperation,
and that the contracts and the programs that he is
working on are extremely integral to the US view of
(11:19):
national defense of space travel of all sorts of services
that they have essentially privatized over the years to the
point where now there isn't an internal mechanism or there
isn't an internal national program that can meet the demand
and meet the ability of Musk's companies.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
And it's not just US government contracts. You've written about
how Musk also has had influence on things, including the
Russia Ukraine War as a result of the infrastructure that
he owns. So how are governments globally grappling with how
to deal with the level of power that he holds.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Yeah, I think that there's been a tendency over the
past few years, and this is not just Musk, but
happens with a lot of different tech companies and billionaires.
They have developed an infrastructure that the whole world now
relies on, and you've seen that with Musk with his
Starlink satellite communications. Starlink is now by far the biggest
(12:25):
satellite communications private company in the world. They have expanded
and expanded and expanded, and they're being used all over
the place, but they're most notably being used in Ukraine
during the Russia Ukraine War, and in two thousand and three,
Musk essentially refuse to let Ukraine use Starlink in Crimea
(12:50):
to launch a surprise attack against Russian forces, and since
then governments have increasingly become aware of and concerned with
the way that Musk could influenced geopolitics, and so we're
seeing Europe kind of struggle to find other ways of
supplanting or providing alternatives to Starlink. There's a bit of
(13:12):
this scramble right now of governments thinking that if Musk
is going to be this irrational, erratic international actor, that
they need to have this sort of plan be in place,
otherwise they are at his whims and they are liable
to kind of face reprisals if they don't play by
(13:34):
his rules.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
What do you think the future is then, of the
Trump Musk relationship. Do you think that there is any
sort of genuine friendship there or have we just seen
the end of what was a temporarily mutually beneficial relationship.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
You know, it's tough to get in anyone's head, but
especially these two. I think that there are two people
who are not really known for having a lot of
close friends or you know, long term relationships that don't
blow up in dramatic ways. But for over a year
(14:14):
now they've spoken very effusively about how much they like
each other. Musk has talked about having ice cream parties
with Trump in the White House and like enjoying showing
him rockets, and Trump has called Musca genius and a patriot,
and it did seem like that for a while. In
(14:36):
addition to being a very politically mutually beneficial relationship and
financially mutually beneficial relationship, it was actually one with some
genuine affection. They're pretty unpredictable people. It's not out of
the question that six months from now they might be
sort of chummy again. But obviously there's just so many
(14:58):
other layers to this that it becomes difficult to predict
what's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Well, Nick, thank you so much to be your time today.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Also in the news today, Australia has joined the UK, Canada,
New Zealand and Norway in announcing sanctions on two ministers
in the Israeli government. Foreign Minister Penny Wong has confirmed
the sanctions applied to Israel's National Security Minister and Finance Minister,
saying they both have encouraged extremist actions that have led
to grave human rights violations against Palestinians, and Quantus has
(15:42):
announced its closing down Jetstar Asia by the end of July,
following years of financial losses. An estimated five hundred jobs
will be lost in the closure. However, Quantus says that
thirteen planes used by Jetstar Asia will be re deployed
across Australia and New Zealand, creating an additional one hundred jobs.
I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven a m. Thanks for listening.
From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven Am.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump were once political partners, sharing praise,
power and ice cream parties. Now the pair have been
trading insults on their own social media networks. In what
(00:22):
started with Musk's opposition to the President's so called Big
Beautiful Bill that proposes extensive tax cuts, the feud has
spilled over into threats that could ground NASA missions and
blow holes in the US federal budget. Today, Tech and
power reporter for The Guardian, Nick Robins early on the
breakup and the dangers of handing critical services to a
(00:43):
single billionaire. It's Thursday, June twelfth.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's sort of Trump derangement syndrome. I guess they call it,
but we have it with others. Do they leave and
they wake up in the morning and that Lammer's gone,
The whole world is different, and they become hustle. I
don't know what it is. Someday you're right.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
About so, Nick, I thought we should begin at the
moment that you think that tensions in the relationship between
Elon Musk and President Trump first became evident.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yeah, it's a bit tough to pinpoint an exact moment,
but they have been on good terms for a long time.
Even as he had a lot of conflict with other
members of the administration, it seemed like Trump would defend
him and that they would actually kind of keep going
(01:47):
with their happy friendship. But when things began to fray,
it seemed as if it was right around the time
that Musk was on his way out of the administration,
and there was a few things as he left that
seemed to start a rift between them.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
President Trump, meanwhile, has withdrawn the nomination of Jared Isaacman
to be the next NASA administrator. A White House spokesperson
set a replacement will be announced soon and says the
next leader of NASA must quote be in complete alignment
with President Trump's America First agenda.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
One of those things was that his preferred choice for
the new head of NASA was repealed, and behind the scenes,
that was something that Musk cared quite a bit about.
And then when things really got a little bit more
openly contentious, was the beginning of the spat over Trump's
(02:47):
Big Beautiful tax bill, as he calls it.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
The tension is mounting over President Trump's Big beautiful bill, as.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Connor The bill, which would extend Trump's twenty seventeen tax cuts,
would balloon the deficit two point four trillion dollars over
the next decade.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
The analysis elon. Musk continues slamming President Trump's budget bill.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Yesterday, he posted on x calling on members of Congress
to quote kill the bill.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
The initial bust up came after Musk was giving an
interview with CBS News and he disparaged the tax bill essentially,
I think I think a bill can be can be
can be big, or it can be beautiful.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I don't know if it could be both my postal opinion.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
He followed that up with some harsher words later calling
it I think an abomination, and that was the big
first salvo in this fight. Right after that, Trump was
having a meeting with the new German Chancellor and he
was asked about Musk's statements, and he hit back saying
(03:56):
that he was disappointed in Musk.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I'm very disapp I've helped ilan a lot.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
He claimed that musk knew everything that was in the
bill or.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Everything about it. He had no problem with him. All
of a sudden, he had a problem, and he only
developed the problem when he found out that we're going
to have to cut the ev mentate because it's billions
and billions of dollars.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
And that he was essentially committing an active betrayal by
criticizing what was in the bill and the bill's effect
on the national deficit.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
And as things escalated, we had insults, but then we
heard actual threats as well, Trump suggesting that he could
cancel all of Musk's government contracts and subsidies. Can you
talk to me about that?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
And Musk's response, Yeah. Initially everybody began paying attention because
they were really going after each other with extremely barbed insults.
There was Musk insinuating that Trump was affiliated with Free
Epstein to the point that he was in the Epstein files.
But it went from that sort of name calling into
(05:07):
those genuine threats of tangible reprisals. And then Trump fired
back by saying that he could cancel all of Musk's
government contracts.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Oh, we'll take a look at everything and everything. He's
got a lot of money. It's a lot of subsidy.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
So we'll take a look at that, which would be
a huge deal for Musk. Musk has extensive contracts through
SpaceX and his various other companies, and to cancel those
would be just devastating for Musk's tech empire. Musk then
shot back by saying that he would decommission SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft,
(05:49):
which is an incredibly integral spacecraft for NASA and for
reaching the International Space Station. It would essentially disable the
US's immediate ability to get anything to and from the
space station.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
He ended up walking that back, though, what does that
tell you, Well.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
He did walk it back, and he actually walked it
back after not that long of a period of time.
It seems like that that is emblematic of the fact
that Musk has a lot to lose in this fight.
It seems like that they are in a period of
sort of mutually assured destruction in some ways, but in
(06:30):
other ways. Trump is still the president, He still has
enormous executive power, and Musk is very very intertwined with
the government and his businesses are very intertwined with the government.
After this dust up, Agan, you saw things like Tesla's
stock begin to plunge because investors thought, well, he's benefited
(06:55):
from this relationship, and if this goes south, then we
don't know what will happen. Maybe regulators will begin targeting
Tesla more. Maybe Tesla will no longer have sort of
a favorable pride of place in the White House the
way that Donald Trump was previously acting as a essentially
car salesman on the White House lawn for them. And
(07:17):
so I think that his walk back showed that perhaps
there was hesitation over following through threats that would be
damaging to his empire.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Trump, maybe the president, but Elon Musk could derail the
country's space program. That's after the break, Nick, can we
talk a bit more about just how interconnected Musk and
his business empire is with the US government. Tell me
(07:55):
about I suppose where the relationship starts and how large
it's become.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
I think it's important to go back a little bit
before even all of his interconnected work with DOGE and
him becoming a senior advisor to Trump. You know, he
obviously donated three hundred million dollars to Trump's reelection campaign efforts.
But if you walk back further than that, he's been
intertwined with the government for a really long time, and
(08:23):
going back to around two thousand and six, two thousand
and eight, he was already integrating SpaceX into NASA through contracts.
Over the increased privatization of the US space program, especially
with SpaceX, he's become intertwined to the point where there
are now almost two decades later, fifteen billion dollars plus
(08:48):
in contracts later immense interconnectedness between NASA and SpaceX. SpaceX
is responsible for so much of NASA's operations and transport missions.
They're integral to future plans of moon landings and Musk's
favorite topic of reaching Mars. It's really a sort of
(09:10):
symbiotic relationship that has evolved, and the US has really
come to rely on Musk for a ton of different
satellite communications, space travel, etc.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Etc. So as these two men feud, then is there
a risk that the entire US space program could collapse?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I mean, if Musk was to follow through on threats
or if this really deteriorates, certainly significant portions of it,
and definitely plans for the future would really become at risk.
Had Musk, for instance, decommissioned that Dragon spacecraft, the US
just wouldn't have had any other immediate means of getting
(09:52):
to the International Space Station apart from essentially begging Russia
to help. It just wouldn't have been a a viable
situation for how NASA could still operate, and if Musk
was to hold hostage and threaten various other elements of
(10:13):
the space program, then it would yeah, derail major, major
plans for the future of space travel in the US.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
It's interesting because, as you say, one way of looking
at this is to see Trump is the one who
holds the most power here as the president of the
United States, but has he in fact handed a lot
of that power over now to Musk. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
I think that some people that I have talked to
have described Musk, through Doge and through his company's work
with the government as just collecting an enormous amount of
state capture. And since he is running these businesses with
a certain kind of autocratic flair over what he decides
(10:57):
to do with them, it means that whenever there is
some major government program or major government desire to get
something done, that they are really reliant on his cooperation,
and that the contracts and the programs that he is
working on are extremely integral to the US view of
(11:19):
national defense of space travel of all sorts of services
that they have essentially privatized over the years to the
point where now there isn't an internal mechanism or there
isn't an internal national program that can meet the demand
and meet the ability of Musk's companies.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
And it's not just US government contracts. You've written about
how Musk also has had influence on things, including the
Russia Ukraine War as a result of the infrastructure that
he owns. So how are governments globally grappling with how
to deal with the level of power that he holds.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Yeah, I think that there's been a tendency over the
past few years, and this is not just Musk, but
happens with a lot of different tech companies and billionaires.
They have developed an infrastructure that the whole world now
relies on, and you've seen that with Musk with his
Starlink satellite communications. Starlink is now by far the biggest
(12:25):
satellite communications private company in the world. They have expanded
and expanded and expanded, and they're being used all over
the place, but they're most notably being used in Ukraine
during the Russia Ukraine War, and in two thousand and three,
Musk essentially refuse to let Ukraine use Starlink in Crimea
(12:50):
to launch a surprise attack against Russian forces, and since
then governments have increasingly become aware of and concerned with
the way that Musk could influenced geopolitics, and so we're
seeing Europe kind of struggle to find other ways of
supplanting or providing alternatives to Starlink. There's a bit of
(13:12):
this scramble right now of governments thinking that if Musk
is going to be this irrational, erratic international actor, that
they need to have this sort of plan be in place,
otherwise they are at his whims and they are liable
to kind of face reprisals if they don't play by
(13:34):
his rules.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
What do you think the future is then, of the
Trump Musk relationship. Do you think that there is any
sort of genuine friendship there or have we just seen
the end of what was a temporarily mutually beneficial relationship.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
You know, it's tough to get in anyone's head, but
especially these two. I think that there are two people
who are not really known for having a lot of
close friends or you know, long term relationships that don't
blow up in dramatic ways. But for over a year
(14:14):
now they've spoken very effusively about how much they like
each other. Musk has talked about having ice cream parties
with Trump in the White House and like enjoying showing
him rockets, and Trump has called Musca genius and a patriot,
and it did seem like that for a while. In
(14:36):
addition to being a very politically mutually beneficial relationship and
financially mutually beneficial relationship, it was actually one with some
genuine affection. They're pretty unpredictable people. It's not out of
the question that six months from now they might be
sort of chummy again. But obviously there's just so many
(14:58):
other layers to this that it becomes difficult to predict
what's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Well, Nick, thank you so much to be your time today.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Also in the news today, Australia has joined the UK, Canada,
New Zealand and Norway in announcing sanctions on two ministers
in the Israeli government. Foreign Minister Penny Wong has confirmed
the sanctions applied to Israel's National Security Minister and Finance Minister,
saying they both have encouraged extremist actions that have led
to grave human rights violations against Palestinians, and Quantus has
(15:42):
announced its closing down Jetstar Asia by the end of July,
following years of financial losses. An estimated five hundred jobs
will be lost in the closure. However, Quantus says that
thirteen planes used by Jetstar Asia will be re deployed
across Australia and New Zealand, creating an additional one hundred jobs.
I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven a m. Thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.