Donald Trump and Elon Musk have gone from happily using each other for mutual benefit to openly slagging each other off in public. Yes, it is a complete and total shock that the relationship between these two extremely well-adjusted, deeply altruistic, entirely compos mentis individuals has broken down, possibly for good.
On Thursday, Musk took to social media to go scorched-earth on the president in a series of escalating posts that caused shares of Tesla to plunge and, as of this writing, included this claim:
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Musk preceded that accusation by calling Trump a literal ingrate, writing, “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude.” Those comments were undoubtedly inspired by Oval Office remarks in which the president shared that he was “very disappointed in Elon,” whom he said he “helped…a lot.” That disappointment stemmed from Musk’s public declaration on Tuesday that Trump’s spending bill was a “disgusting abomination.”
How did it come to this? After all, it wasn’t so long ago that these two were basically roommates and/or father and son. They held rallies together. They performed infomercials in front of the White House. Musk bought Trump a second term, while Trump threatened jail sentences for people doing harm to Teslas. Sure, Trump was using Musk for his money and Musk was using Trump for power, but still!
Anyway, it appears it’s now Trump’s turn to lob one across the net, and there’s no telling in which direction he’ll go. Will he slap Musk with one of his patented mean nicknames? Will he claim he didn’t need Musk’s money to win the election? Will he weigh in on Musk’s claim that he is “NOT taking drugs”? Hey, maybe he’ll deport the guy! (Steve Bannon has said he should.) Sure, the South African–born billionaire is a dual US-Canadian citizen, but that doesn’t matter anymore!
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