Why Did Elon Musk Turn Against Trump in the First Place?

Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The seemingly inevitable rupture between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, which began playing out last week as Musk attacked the president online, is nothing if not entertaining. But spectacle aside, there are enormous consequences for the relationship between these two petty and powerful men: for the future of the GOP’s mega-spending bill, which has drawn Musk’s ire; for DOGE, the agency-destroying entity that remains embedded throughout Washington; and for Musk’s businesses, some of which are inextricably linked with the U.S. government. To better understand the feud and its fallout, I spoke with Marc Caputo, a well-sourced Axios White House reporter who has covered it extensively. We spoke about why Musk turned against Trump and the GOP spending bill, why Trump has treated Musk with kid gloves compared to others who have crossed him, and the time Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suspected Musk of being high in the White House.

You tweeted a few days ago that there was a non-zero chance that Elon and Trump would eventually be in the Oval Office together as Trump signs the GOP’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” — in other words, that they’ll fully make up. Elon backed off a little toward the end of last week, for instance deleting tweets that connected Trump to Jeffrey Epstein. But Trump has been calling various news outlets and telling them he’s done with Elon, that he has no desire to repair their relationship. What’s your sense of a possible detente right now?
Remember that Donald Trump, in the end, is essentially a TV show figure. We are in As Trump World Turns. And just like any telenovela, or soap opera, or storylines from wrestling, characters come and characters go. They get written in and written out of scripts. And a good example of that is Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon was the guy who was on the campaign, and in the White House. Then they had a falling out. Steve Bannon was “Sloppy Steve” and Trump did nothing but insult him. And now they’re allies again, Trump speaks to him, takes his advice. He could be credibly called a Trump advisor.

And Bannon wants to deport Elon Musk.
Correct. Again, this is wrestling. This is a telenovela. And just knowing how Trump is, and knowing the fact that he really likes, or liked, Elon Musk … Trump prizes moneymaking, and this is the richest man in the world, and Trump loves rockets, and telecom, and media, and social media, and Elon Musk is first in class for all of those things. So he likes him. And when they had their falling out, Trump was actually — and I know this sounds crazy, I didn’t report it at the time, because I would need a little more reporting — but one very well-placed source told me that Trump’s feelings were hurt.

He has feelings?
Yeah. A lot of people think Donald Trump doesn’t have feelings, but his feelings were actually hurt. And Trump was incredibly muted in response to what Musk was saying, compared to anyone else. No one else would’ve gotten away with that.

Yes, he has been restrained. He’s disappointed and upset, but he’s not going nuclear the way he usually does.
Don’t get me wrong, is he pissed off at Elon Musk? Yeah. Is he annoyed? Irked? There’s probably a number of verbs that don’t come to mind at the moment that would apply. But overall, Trump’s history has shown that he has these spats and fallings out, and then he has rapprochements. Now, I said a non-zero chance of that. We should distinguish between possibility and probability. And I have no idea how to gauge the probability. I think the possibility is there — the probability, I don’t know. But the fact that Trump has had such a muted response to this is notable.

The reality is Elon Musk’s history has shown he does have nasty breakups, whether it’s one of his baby mamas or some of his prior business associates. And he was just cruising for a fight. He was critical of the bill, but not in an over-the-top way, and then he waited until Tuesday and basically ambushed Karoline Levitt during the White House press briefing by intentionally timing his X posts to coincide with her being up there. She didn’t really have any sort of talking points or game plan ahead of time. Leavitt’s a pro, and she hit the messaging right on the head, kind of perfectly. But what Musk did there was just a great example of how he just wanted to fight over it. And then the next day and a half, he was just ratcheting up the pressure and trying to get a rise out of Trump. And finally Trump responded in a relatively mild fashion, and then Musk went overboard. The reality is these two guys have a lot more in common, especially relative to their impulse control on social media, than they have differences.

To return to that question about Trump’s affection for Musk:  There hasn’t been a figure like him in Trump’s orbit during his presidency. They were doing press conferences together, and Trump was ceding the spotlight even as Musk was getting all this bad press. People were surprised this breakup didn’t happen sooner. Does that just come down to the fact that Trump likes him personally? Or is it more that the world’s richest man was working for him and was his supplicant?
I think it’s all of those things. Tevi Troy wrote a book about the influence of powerful men and presidents, and the relationship between them. And he has a very insightful view of this, which is that when you ascend to the level of president, it can be a lonely position, because you kind of don’t have a friend. Everyone wants something from you or is your employee. When Musk was referred to as the First Buddy, that’s actually accurate. Trump has these relationships with the people. He has one, and it’s gone less reported, and it’s been less obvious, but he has this relationship with JD Vance. To the degree you could consider Elon Musk a sort of sibling in this relationship, Vance has been a very respectful and smart younger brother. And Trump’s the dad. He’s sort of hung back. He’s never shown any sort of jealousy or tried to impede Musk whatsoever.

The other big question here is why Musk blew up at Trump in the first place. There’s been all kinds of theories. You had a piece that included four leading ones, and first on the list was he was upset about a provision in the spending that cuts out the electric vehicle tax credit. But I was a little confused by that, because he has come out publicly against the credit in the past.
But meanwhile, Tesla is actually lobbying for it. And Speaker Mike Johnson has said publicly that Elon Musk had asked about it. I mean, I haven’t had the opportunity to ask Musk about this, but he would not be the first person who pretends he doesn’t want something, but actually wants something. I’m told by very reliable people — and the evidence demonstrates including the actual paid lobbying by Tesla — that Musk was lobbying for it behind the scenes.

It often seems that personal slights drive Musk more than any policy stuff. Like, Biden didn’t invite him to an electric-vehicle summit, and that was the beginning of the end. 
It’s possible. The story I did outlined what I call inflection points. There were four inflection points. There are other ones, don’t get me wrong. But one is the way electric vehicles and alternative energy are dealt with in this package; one is the matter of FAA’s contracting, and its need to overhaul the air traffic control system; one is that by all indications, Musk wanted to stay in the White House in some way, shape, or form, and there were a number of people for various reasons who didn’t really want that anymore. One of those people might’ve been Trump. But Musk was a special government employee whose status had basically lapsed, and they’re like, “Nope, sorry, you got to go.” And that also speaks to your theory about the personal nature of it.

And then the fourth one is also kind of personal. That’s Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator pick who was pulled, and that gets into these other issues of Trump’s court — the kremlinology of Trumpworld. You have different factions and different groups of people, and this very close advisor of Trump’s, Sergio Gor, who heads the personnel office, has a great amount of power. And all indications are he spent a good amount of time trying to scuttle Elon in one way or another. The New York Post picked up the baton and ran with it with some of our reporting, which indicated that’s what he did with his NASA administrator — in the words of one person, as a fuck you to Elon on the way out the door.

You traced the bad blood between them to a meeting back in March, when there was a shouting match between Musk and Marco Rubio. And I guess Gor was on the Rubio side of that.
Gor was more on the Gor side of it. Our understanding is that Musk was at the height of his power and was going around basically telling everyone what a shitty job they did. Among those he told were doing a shitty job was Sergio, who then defended himself, and rather well. saying, Because Musk accused him of not doing enough quickly enough to get enough people in the administration, and Gor pushed back with stats comparing the hiring that happened under this administration. versus others. What I was told is that if you just looked at Elon’s words written out, you wouldn’t think they’re that insulting. But his tone was just full of acid. And to be clear, not the fun kind that Elon might do.

Speaking of which, were you hearing much about Musk’s ketamine use while he was in the White House?
I did the first story about Elon’s shouting match that he had with Scott Bessent in the White House. Immediately afterward, Bessent was telling people, “This guy is all cracked out. He looks like he was up all night on something.” Now, just to be very clear, there’s no indication — there’s never been an allegation that Elon Musk smokes crack, ok?

Everything else, but not that.
Right. But one of the people with whom I spoke for that story had said Elon didn’t seem right that day, and they thought that Bessent might be onto something in suspecting that about Elon. Because they said, when you ask Elon about certain things, he’s very thoughtful. Sometimes he’ll take a pause, two seconds, three seconds, and then he’ll respond. And it’s not the normal way that people discourse, right? Discourse is usually a little faster. I say something, you say something. There’s not a lot of time. Whereas he would take these long pauses. On this day, they said that when they were talking to Musk, he was taking 12 to 15 seconds to respond, and the person was saying, “Hello, are you there? Do you know what’s going on?” There had been no suspicions that I was aware of from staff other than that one incident. Otherwise, you’ve heard the various rumors and you’ve seen the various reports, and I don’t have anything new to add.

Getting back to how we started this — Trump making up with Musk would not be that surprising, given what we know about his patterns and the rotating TV cast, as you said. Musk making up with Trump might be a little more uncertain, because he actually holds grudges longer, I think.
My best guess is that in this case, Musk would probably need to make the first move. The reality is — not to take Trump’s side in this, but when you just kind of look at the math of it, if you were to score everything out of a spreadsheet, who talked the most shit about whom? Musk was much more aggressive and insulting than Trump was. And so my best guess is that not only was Trump hurt, but he was more aggrieved. So I would think, and this is just a guess, that were there to be a rapprochement, Elon Musk would probably have to begin with a call where he says he’s sorry.

And of course also Trump has a lot more leverage over him than vice versa, I think.
I mean, technically.

Well, Trump can really screw with his companies.
If Trump wants to go full dictator, Elon Musk is in serious trouble.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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