Brief summary

The text discusses the ongoing feud between President Trump and Elon Musk, with Musk making various claims against Trump, including that Trump’s name is in the Epstein files and that Trump would not have won the election without Musk’s support. The White House has responded, calling Musk’s comments an “unfortunate episode” and stating that the president is focused on passing legislation. The situation has caused a divide among Trump’s supporters, with some backing Musk and others standing by the president. There are concerns that Musk’s criticisms could impact the passage of the president’s legislative agenda, and it is unlikely that the two will reconcile anytime soon.

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00:00:00

In the meantime, we do have to at the top of the hour now, it’s four o’clock here on the West Coast, seven o’clock there in Washington. Let’s get into really the biggest story of the day, all unfolding over several hours between President Trump and Elon Musk, his one-time political advisor, the fallout really is going to be huge this year. But in the meantime, the White House is responding to one of these claims made by Elon Musk in this kind of litany of tweets and posts on X Today. If we could put that up. One of the claims that Elon Musk made today on social media was that the fact that the White House has not released the full file of the Jeffrey Epstein list is because, according to Musk, President Trump’s name is included in those very files.

00:00:50

So, the White House is responding to this. This was the original post here: He says, ‘time to drop the really big bomb. Real Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.’ He says, ‘have a nice day, DJT.’ Now, the White House press shop is responding in kind. And we have that, I think. So they said this: ‘This is an unfortunate episode from Elon. who is unhappy with the one big beautiful bill because it does not include the policies he wanted.’ The president is focused on passing this historic piece of legislation and making our country great again. Alright, in the meantime, though, we do have to get into this a little bit further because so many people are talking about it.

00:01:36

And we’re going to do that with our friend there at the Washington Examiner, Christian Datok, who covers the White House each and every day. Christian joins me. Christian, good to see you here. There’s a lot to get to, and it’s kind of hard to know where to start. I’m going to start it as follows. So today, Musk said, among other things, this. Trump would have lost the election if not for his money and support. That’s the tariffs, the Trump tariffs, the kind of key signature policy. Economically, officials at the Trump White House say that those tariffs will lead to a recession in the second half of this year, and of course we just highlighted on that that Trump will not release the Phil Epstein files because Trump is in them.

00:02:16

Going back to the big beautiful bill that it should be rewritten, it should be discarded whole cloth, and lawmakers should start over here. If you could get our viewers up to speed, how did this all happen and start today? Well, Andrew, this started because Elon Musk, since he left the government last Friday, has been very critical of this, quote, one big, beautiful bill that Donald Trump is pushing Republicans to advance to his desk. And the criticism is simple: One, the White House is not telling the truth. And this will put trillions onto the national deficit. And Musk is claiming that it makes Doge’s work harder to do. Oval Office sit-down with Chancellor Merz of Germany, he addressed Musk’s comment for the first time in person. And he said, this isn’t actually about the deficit.

00:03:11

This is because Elon Musk is angry that we are rolling back the electric vehicle tax breaks that the Biden administration put in place as a part of this legislation. The president claimed that Mr. Musk has Trump derangement syndrome, a sort of joke that those on the right like to make about folks on the left to raise concerns or maybe even more strongly worded statements about anything that President Trump does. And throughout that process, Elon was posting on X. Again, he said Donald Trump would not have won the election without him. And these two sorts of trading barbs throughout the course of the day. Resulted in everything you just outlined on Musk’s part, and Donald Trump saying that the best way to cut the deficit is to straight up cancel all of Elon Musk’s federal contracts.

00:04:08

Those are worth somewhere near $40 billion. Now, Mr. Musk had said, I’m going to cancel the Dragon spaceflight. That’s, of course, the spacecraft that ferries astronauts to and from ISS, the International Space Station. And this thing just took on a new life of its own. But to be honest, the big concern for Donald Trump is, does Elon Musk embolden folks like Thomas Mastie or others, these fiscal hawks on the Hill, who had already been raising the alarm about the bill? Do they feel like they now have a permission structure to vote against the president? And of course, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, had a heavy hand in the last election, which he alluded to earlier today. Does he start trying to primary Republicans who either vote for this bill or back President Trump against him?

00:04:58

Does he start throwing money at the Democrats? This is a total sea change compared to Musk and Trump’s relationship just a few days ago. And I’m not so sure it’s one that either will walk away from unscathed. So, Christian, I have to ask, because lest we forget, I’m going to remind the viewers, on Friday of last week in the Oval Office, that was Musk’s last day as a special government employee, the president gave him this extremely nice gift, this gold key in this mahogany box, a lot of photos of it online. But I have to ask, is it the view from the White House or Trump staffers or, you know, folks like yourself in the White House press corps?

00:05:39

That this was always going to end this way, that this was inevitable, that they would grow crosswise of each other on something no matter what at some point in time is that a feeling there in the Trump White House or is the Trump White House just completely caught off guard by this? There was that piece yesterday in The Wall Street Journal where sources said as much to the reporters that that they were completely caught off guard by some of Musk’s comments. So, what’s going on? I think they might have been caught off guard a little bit, but this thing is building steadily. And even just in the few hours in between this entire situation blowing up and the time that I’m speaking with you right now, I spoke to a number of White House officials who both sort of tried to laugh off this entire situation, referring to it as the one big, beautiful breakup.

00:06:28

But a number of others have said, yes, Elon Musk on his way out the door. And even before that. Got into serious conflict with senior members of the president’s team, whether it’s cabinet officials like Scott Besson or any number of folks regarding the ways that Doge was pursuing some of these cuts at their agencies. And of course, the public grumbling, or excuse me, the private grumbling he was doing behind the scenes about this bill. Now, I don’t think anyone at the White House thought it would devolve into such a reality TV scene. As it did earlier today, but they certainly I think were ready to get Musk out the door. He had worn out his welcome and he had essentially given the White House all of these additional bad headlines that they had to deal with regarding the way that he ran Doge in those 130 days.

00:07:21

So I think the majority of White House staffers are happy to see Musk heading out the other door, but again there are concerns about what does this mean politically. You don’t want to infuriate the angriest man in the world. That being said, I think Musk needs to be cautious here because he’s got all the money, but he doesn’t have the backing of the United States government anymore. Now, someone like Steve Bannon, oh, go ahead. I didn’t mean to cut you off there. Well, no, I’m just saying it does seem to have reached some type of fever pitch, though in one of these posts on True Social, Trump essentially alluded to the fact that he let Musk go. Does that mean he fired Musk?

00:08:01

I mean, it was reported yesterday in that Wall Street Journal piece that Musk had asked White House advisers to stay on even longer, and they denied that request. Did Trump fire Musk? He did not fire him, at least according to the technical language of that special government employee contract. I do know earlier during the president’s term, Musk was lobbying to get an early extension. I do not know if that ever was raised formally with the president or if. Things had changed from earlier in the term compared to, again, that tense period between Musk and the cabinet secretaries about the rescissions that the White House was setting up to Capitol Hill, this bill in and of itself. But the president did not fire Elon Musk.

00:08:48

And I think if he did, you would have seen it in that Truth Social post. We haven’t heard Trump say those Apprentice-coined words yet in his second term in office. And this would have been the perfect opportunity to dust off the catchphrase. Yeah, some have even commented that the president is, even online, uncharacteristically being somewhat restrained about all of this here. And so I was somewhat amused by that fact. And I have to ask you this. In the White House, on Capitol Hill, among some of the president’s acolytes and supporters, are you seeing right now in real-time camps forming? This is the Musk camp. This is the president’s camp. And it’s going to be not just a war between, to your point, the two most powerful men in the world, but their supporters as well.

00:09:37

Do you see that forming right now? It’s already happening, Andrew. Let’s be honest. I think X, of course, owned by Musk, has become one of the top right-leaning social media apps over the course of the past two years or so. And on that app, you had die-hard MAGA supporters, you know, confused as to how to act. Do we back the president in this regard? Do we, many of them who take part in X’s creator incentive program, do we, you know, bite the hand that is feeding us right now? I think the battle lines are being drawn. And I mentioned Steve Bannon a second ago. He obviously is a steadfast supporter of Donald Trump. He is calling on the White House to open investigation into Musk’s immigration status and his drug use, and eventually deport him back to South Africa.

00:10:32

You’re seeing others, perhaps some conservatives or Republicans who might be new to the MAGA party, who came from the tech world, of course, perhaps emboldened by Musk’s own decision to endorse Donald Trump last year. And they are lining up clearly behind their guy. So the battle lines have been drawn. I do think this thing is probably going to get nastier before it gets any better. But this is the Trump world that we’re living in right now. Narratives change with the stroke of a pen or the typing of a few characters out on Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it. So we might be talking about something very different this time next week. Although I’m sure we’ll be talking about it again tomorrow on Friday.

00:11:17

Okay, so Christian, I just have to put up all of the tweets from us. We compiled them here. I mean, this is kind of the behavior of a guy who feels wronged. I mean, he’s extremely emotional about this. You can tell he’s been really bottling this in for a really long time. He’s no longer with his employer, the federal government, and he is unleashing all of this here, which leads me to my next question. Is there an off-ramp here? You know, does this get resolved or reconciled between Musk and the president anytime soon? Will there be some type of summit or detente where they can let bygones be bygones? I know you’re not a couples therapist here, but is there an off-ramp to this fight at all?

00:12:03

I know it’s the first day of it where it’s really gotten heated, but do you see this ending anytime soon? In my mind, the simple answer is no, Andrew. And let’s be honest, this is what the kids these days like to call a major crash out. As these tweets are scrolling by, you can see this isn’t just Elon Musk making statements. He’s reading his replies. He’s reading other tweets. He’s quote tweeting people and replying to people. This clearly is not an orchestrated play. This appears to be Mr. Musk’s MO for the time being and for the foreseeable future. And to be quite frank, I don’t think there’s anything that Donald Trump can do, short of pulling that bill, which we know isn’t going to happen, to make this thing go away.

00:12:49

Now, again, you never know what’s going to happen with Donald Trump; he’s perhaps the most temperamental president we’ve ever had. And perhaps next time this week, buoyed by some potential good news regarding the war in Ukraine or maybe some of these trade deals, maybe he decides, you know what, I’m going to be the bigger guy. Let’s extend an olive branch over to Elon. But as it stands right now, there’s no going back for these two. Well, yeah, I only bring up kind of the personal aspect to some of these attacks because you can make the argument, yeah, now we know Elon, he doesn’t like the tariff policy. He doesn’t like the big, beautiful bill. But he is really going at the kind of core and character of President Trump, saying he’s only going to be around for three and a half more years.

00:13:34

I could be around for 40 more plus years. He’s talking about his businesses. Although I should say Tesla’s stock lost about $150 billion in market capitalization today. So it seems like everyone’s losing here. Everyone’s losing except for perhaps the meme creators and the content generators on social media. I mean, I would say we’ve never seen anything like this out of the White House before, specifically something coming based on the president’s comments in an Oval Office ceremony. But it wasn’t that long ago that President Trump had President Ramaphosa of South Africa. And of course, who can forget the Oval Office meeting with Vladimir Zelensky? I think you’re right to point out that Elon Musk’s critiques, which started purely about this piece of legislation, have now transcended.

00:14:23

They are purely directed at Donald Trump, his character, his moral fiber, his fitness to lead this country. And again, I think because of that reason, there’s no going back. Donald Trump, you can say a lot of things about his policies, and he might not take a part depending on how you behave behind closed doors. But when you start saying that, you know, I am responsible for your win, you are not fit to lead. That’s a very different story. So how does the White House go on from here? Are they going to be on the attack or are they going to let this hopefully fizzle out? What’s their strategy? Well, as of right now, I think they’re just trying to let it fizzle out. Caroline Leavitt had that statement responding specifically to the claims about the Jeffrey Epstein files.

00:15:09

But when I went in there and asked about Steve Bannon’s claims or suggestion that Elon Musk needs to be deported, they just told me they’re not going to comment. And they’re trying to laugh this off because of the precarious position that this now puts the president in terms of passing this bill, perhaps not forever, but at least before that July 4th deadline that he himself has set. It’s looking like the Thomas Massys of the world, the Rand Pauls of the world. They now have the green light to say, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, just because we’re Republicans, we’re not going to vote for everything Donald Trump says, even if it means roughly 70% of American households will see their taxes go up when they’re filing in April because these tax cuts from 2017 have expired. So this made Donald Trump’s positioning and his status on the Hill just that much more tenuous. And I do think that’s why the White House is not going fully on the attack, because that would only make things worse for them than they already are. All right, Christian Daytalk, they’re live from the White House. Christian, thanks so much for your insight. We’ll talk soon. Take care, Andrew.

FQAs

Q1: How did the Musk-Trump conflict escalate today?​​

A:Musk resigned as special advisor on Friday, then launched a social media tirade criticizing Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” claiming it would explode the deficit and harm Dogecoin (his crypto project). He also accused Trump of hiding Epstein files and claimed Trump only won the 2024 election due to his financial support. Trump’s team retaliated by mocking Musk’s “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and threatening to cancel $40B in SpaceX contracts.

Q2: Was this fallout inevitable?​

​A:White House officials were ​​not shocked​​ by Musk’s criticism (due to pre-existing friction with cabinet members over budget cuts), but the ​​public reality-TV-style feud stunned them​​. Insiders:

• Laughed it off as the “one big beautiful breakup”
• Felt Musk had “worn out his welcome” after policy clashes
• Were relieved he resigned but worried about political fallout

Q3: What are the political consequences?

A:Battle lines are already drawn​​:

• ​​MAGA loyalists​​ (e.g., Steve Bannon) demand investigations into Musk’s immigration/drug use
• ​​Tech-aligned conservatives​​ side with Musk, seeing him as a free-speech champion
• ​​Fiscal hawks​​ (e.g., Thomas Massy) feel emboldened to oppose Trump’s bill
• ​​X (Twitter) creators​​ face loyalty tests: back Trump or risk losing monetization