Charles Feldman: US Political Analyst on Trump vs Musk

US President Donald Trump and his now former-colleague Elon Musk are officially feuding.

A disagreement over spending in Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ has led to mud to the pair flinging personal insults back and forth.

In a series of posts on X, Musk called for Trump’s impeachment and claimed he was involved with child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

KNX News Presenter out of Los Angeles Charles Feldman talks to Heather du Plessis-Allan about where the relationship sits now.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, that Trump Musk bromance has turned septic, hasn't it.
Musk says that Trump is in the Epstein files and
should be impeached. Trump says he's very disappointed in Musk,
and it's all a tante about the ev incentives. Now,
Charles Feldman is a journalist and a political analyst in
Los Angeles and with us.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Now, Hey, Charles, Hey, how you doing.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
I'm well, thank you. Who's going to win this?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Well, that's a really good question, because here you have,
in effect a battle between arguably the most powerful politician
on the planet, the President of the United States, versus
the richest man on the planet, Elon Musk. So I
don't know. I'm not a betting man, so I won't bet,

(00:43):
but I do think that this is going to be
very interesting in the next few days.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Well, Trump should be worried, shouldn't he, Because Musk certainly
helped him to powers, So presumably Musk can rally just
as much of those resources and make his life hard.
Wiley's in power.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Well, they both have good reason to be concerned about
one another. And here's why. In a nutshell. Let's take
President Trump first. President Trump, You're right, he benefited to
the tune of about a quarter of a billion dollars
that Elon Musk pumped into Trump's campaign to reclaim the

(01:20):
White House. More importantly, Musk also helped finance a lot
of the campaigns for winning Republicans in the Senate and
in the House of Representatives. So if Musk disappears and
takes the money that he has with him, that is
a problem for mister Trump and for Republicans, you know,

(01:43):
down the road. Now, let's look at it from the
other point of view. If you're Elon Musk, he's got
some problems too. The President is threatening to take away
a lot of federal contracts, of which Elon Musk benefits enormously,
for Tesla, for SpaceX. He's threatening. In fact, Steve Bannon,

(02:05):
who as I'm sure you know, has been a long
time Trump supporter and activist, I suppose he tonight, is
also suggesting that Elon must be deported from the United States,
even though he actually is a US citizen and has
been for something like twenty years now. So this is

(02:26):
really ugly. And you know, and I've said this to
some other people in the past few hours, if you
were a writer and if you sat down to write
a novel or a screenplay or a teleplay, and you
try to sell this plot to anybody, they would probably
laugh you out of the building.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
This was always going to end this way, wasn't it, though,
with two characters like that.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, I mean, I think you're right about that you're
talking about. I mean, look at the egos that you're
dealing with. You know, it takes an enormous ego, which
certainly mister Trump has for anyone, frankly to run for
and be elected as president of the United States. But

(03:10):
certainly mister Trump probably surpasses most in the ego department.
And then mat v Elon Musk, who, again it's no
small feed. I suppose to be the richest man in
the known universe. So, yes, you're talking about a clash
of incredible egos. It was bound to have a parting
of the ways at some point. Mister Trump is not

(03:33):
known for liking to share the spotlight with anyone. But
having said that, nobody I think it would have predicted
that the end of this relationship, if it is an end,
but I suspect it is, at least in the short run.
No one would have suspected it would end in such

(03:54):
a dramatic in some ways, almost Shakespearean, you know, and
anyone who says that they would have predicted it would
end this way is probably lying.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Charles. It's very good to talk to you. Thank you
so much. As Charles Feldman, us political analyst.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
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