Trump, Musk feud explodes into public view

Trump, Musk feud explodes into public view

We’ve been watching President Trump in the Oval Office with the German chancellor and a lot to get to here. But the most interesting and perhaps important issue, political issue and policy issue is what President Trump said about his now former friend. At least it seems Elon Musk and I want to go to Atlanta, train at the white House. Elena. it seems as though we saw kind of the unraveling of a bromance real time. And what our viewers saw was what it turned out to be. One side of a fight. The other side was Elon Musk, real time, using his platform X to respond and kind of push back on many of the things that President Trump said. We’re going to show our viewers what happened, but I want you to kind of give a sense of what brought us to this extraordinary moment. Just a few days after he gave a big, glowing goodbye to Elon Musk from the white House. Yeah, it’s not even a week. Dan, since we saw them both praise each other from the Oval Office two days later now. And actually, the first time, reporters are actually having the opportunity to ask the president about this. since that moment, we’re now seeing this completely fresh relationship on a full display. It’s very remarkable, given just how close. I know, you know, my colleagues here at the white House. And I know that the President and Musk have been for months now. Really him being one of the president’s favorite people, on this white House complex. I want to give you a sense just of some of the key things I took away from the president’s comments. Overall, though, I would note as well that his tone was, strikingly somber when discussing this. And really, you could see that it saddened him almost. You could see kind of the emotion in his tone and on his face. As he was discussing this, he said, quote, I’ve always liked Elon. He said he I was very surprised. He said he would or rather had him criticize him directly, the rather than the spending bill, that the president has been working tirelessly with his team to try and muscle through Congress. He said. And this to me was maybe the most notable, quote from the president. He said, look, Elon and I had had being a very key word here, had a GREAtrillionELATIONSHIP. I don’t know if we will any more. He said he was very disappointed in Musk. He went on to add, that Pete Musk knew about the, quote, inner workings of the of the bill very intimately and claimed that he only started to take issue with it and had a problem with it, once he left the administration, but also once he learned of the breadth of the electric vehicle, mandate, really the credits that are being revoked in this bill, that, of course, could and will impact Tesla. we also did see, as you mentioned, Dana musk respond to this just moments ago on X. He had really been posting throughout the entire time the president was speaking. But then he did post, made this one post linking to a video of the president making these comments about him and said, keep the EV mandates in the bill, but get rid of the pork and the rest of it. He said, you could have an ugly big bill or a slim and beautiful bill. So clearly showing, actually at the top of that post, he said, quote, whatever, really showing, you know, where he stands on this all to say. I mean, if you just look at months ago, particularly leading up to him being in the white House and then ever since the president, you know, would parade Musk around Mar-A-Lago and his different properties with him, always had him by his side at the dinner table, continued to allow him to walk into the oval, you know, unannounced whenever he wanted. This is very far from that. And it’s very unclear now where this relationship is going to go. Well, I think we’re watching where it’s going, and it’s going pretty downhill pretty fast. Elena, thank you so much. I am joined here by some really terrific reporters. CNN’s Kristen Holmes. Josh Dawsey Dorsey of The Wall Street Journal, someone came to Young’s at the New York Times and CNN’s Kylie Atwood. Let’s just start by recapping one of the comments that President Trump made about Elon Musk. You saw a man who was very happy when he stood behind the oval desk. And, even with a black guy, I said, do you want a little makeup? We’ll get you the makeup. But he said, no, I don’t think so. Which is interesting and very nice. He wants to be who he is. So you could make that statement to, I guess. Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if. Well, anymore. I was surprised because you were here. Everybody in this room practically was here as we had a wonderful send off. He said wonderful things about me. You couldn’t have nicer said the best thing. He’s worn the hat. Trump was right about everything. And I am right about the great, big, beautiful bill. And that’s what this is all about right now. And I just want to make that clear to our viewers. I’m sure, you understand that this, relationship basically exploded yesterday when Elon Musk started really aggressively putting on his social media platform that this bill that he is desperate to get through the Senate after it passed the House is bad. He wrote. Kill the bill and many other things. And so you just saw the president say what we just heard. He said, people leave my administration. They love us, and that at some point they miss it so badly. Some of them embrace it, some of them become hostile. Trump derangement syndrome. So this is really fascinating because as of yesterday, at the exact same time, maybe a few hours later into the afternoon, I spoke to a number of Trump’s top advisers who still were unsure of how he was going to respond to Elon Musk. There were still a lot of questions. He was raising questions with them as to, do you think this is just a business decision? Do you think he’s lashing out at this because of these electric vehicle mandates? It’s probably something he has to do now that he’s leaving the government. And it’s all about the business. Obviously, Donald Trump likes to make things about money and business kind of his way of saying, okay, maybe that’s what he’s doing here. He was angry when that first tweet came out two days ago during the briefing. But then he also had a lot of questions as to where this was coming from, because he did believe that Elon knew about the EV mandate. His team does believe that this is all about business, all about the EV mandate that this is all about, these credits that Elon Musk believes are unfair, which he actually. And it’s not just that it’s big and full of. Right? It’s not pork. It’s not what he’s saying there. But I think the most telling thing about this is that clearly we’ve hit a new marker since then, which is we had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore. And I can tell you that members of Trump’s team have reached out to Elon Musk. No response. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have not spoken. Yeah, and this was baffling, though. For several months, Trump has said publicly, repeatedly that he and Ian are close and vice versa. But there’s been lots of frustrations that have happened between the two man over political endorsements, over Elon trying to get a briefing of the Department of Defense over China, over some of the other staff fights inside the white House. And Trump’s team was ready to see Elon go. There’s no doubt about it. Trump himself wanted to have an event on Friday and try to have an amicable, breakup here, in part because Iran is such a wealthy donor. He is the richest man in the world. He fueled hundreds of millions of dollars for this campaign. He is a political force to a large degree. He controls one of the main ways that Republicans communicate. I mean, this unlike some other relationships, Trump has had a breakup here. Could go, could hurt him, too. I mean, there really is a lot of caution here that I think his his people are trying to navigate. Okay, where are we going from here? Because we’re playing with with with live, you know, and this is what you were referring to. You see on the screen this is a video of the two of them in the Oval Office, which, by the way, I don’t want to not I want to I don’t want to let it go unmentioned that the president made fun of the black eye that Elon Musk had. I mean, that was very clear that he wanted to get that in there. But when it comes to the substance of what we’re talking about here, I also want to underscore that they are kind of saying the quiet part out loud with regard to Elon Musk’s business interests and the fact that there was even a question inside the white House, maybe by the president himself, because he just said it in, in the Oval Office that Elon Musk doesn’t like this bill because it’s not good for his business. The EV mandate, electric vehicle mandate goes away. I mean, it’s they’re not even pretending that there’s no conflict of interest here. And that was one of the things that Musk responded to on real time. He said false. This bill was never shot with. Well, first he said, that’s not about that. And then he said false. This bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night. So fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it. That was in response to, Trump saying he was disappointed with Musk because he knew the inner workings of this bill better than anyone sitting here. You had the president in the Oval Office essentially say that Elon Musk criticism, is a matter of personal grievance. It’s a matter of the fact that he thinks that this will hurt his business. Elon, up until this point, when he has shared criticism for this bill, has said that it’s about undermining, really the effort he took to cut federal bureaucracy, reduce the deficit as well. And he said that it’s about sort of fiscal responsibility. Here. You have the president completely saying that that is not true, and that it’s really actually about somebody trying to protect his business, which is interesting also because Elon was with the administration when the Trump administration was rolling back EV subsidies that the Biden administration put forward as well. So that’s another detail out here. But it’s remarkable to see here just the shift in the past couple days. I asked the president last Friday about reports of Elon Musk’s drug use as well, and he went out of his way to say that that is not a concern. That is not troubling to him, that he still stands by Elon Musk. All of that. Now to this point where now you have criticism against a signature part of Trump’s domestic agenda, and now he’s saying, well, this is someone who’s just worried about their business, essentially.

President Donald Trump appeared to confirm the deterioration of his relationship with Elon Musk, saying he was “very disappointed” in the tech billionaire, who exited his top advisory role at the White House and subsequently railed against the president’s sweeping tax and spending package. #CNN #News