Forget Mike Tyson vs Logan Paul, who'd have thought Elon Musk vs Donald Trump would be the best fight we'd witness in the past 12 months? While things originally looked rosy between the President of the United States and his self-appointed First Buddy, the honeymoon period only lasted six months until the mud-slinging started. Elon Musk's designation as a special government employee always meant he could only work 130 days of the year, and while he'd vowed he'd soon be refocusing his efforts on ventures like Tesla and SpaceX, few expected him to go out with such a bang. Then again, this is the guy who took to the stage with a gilded chainsaw and also once sported a block of cheese on his head.
Things started to go wrong when Musk criticized Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, with the former branding it a 'disgusting abomination'. While the White House tried to manage damage control, Musk then took to X in a series of explosive posts that vowed to pull SpaceX's Dragon rocket out of service, called for Trump to be impeached, and also claimed the President's name is being hidden from the Epstein Files.
Ahead of this, the POTUS told press at the Oval Office: "Elon and I have a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore. I was surprised, because… we had a wonderful sendoff. He said wonderful things about me."
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Expanding on Musk taking aim at his bill, Trump said he was 'disappointed' in the former Department of Government Efficiency Head and claims the world's richest man only had a problem with it when he left office.
Comparing Musk to others who've left his side, the President sniped, "At some point, they miss it so badly...some of them actually become hostile. I don’t know what it is, it’s sort of ‘Trump derangement syndrome’, I guess they call it.
"They wake up in the morning, the glamor is gone, the whole world is different, and they become hostile."
The idea of Trump Derangement Syndrome can be traced back to Esther Goldberg's 2015 op-ed in The American Spectator, which she used to describe the 'Ruling Class Republicans' who are dismissive of Trump. This in itself is an evolution of the Bush Derangement Syndrome from 2003.
As for why he thinks Musk suddenly turned, Trump concluded: "Elon is upset because we took the EV mandate, which was a lot of money for electric vehicles.
“They’re having a hard time, the electric vehicles, and they want us to pay billions of dollars in subsidy. Elon knew this from the beginning."
On Truth Social, Trump went on to say Musk has gone 'crazy' over the EV mandate, giving another parting shot: "Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY! The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!"
The question is, will Trump be asking for his golden key to be returned?