By T N Ashok
NEW YORK: The differences between US President Donald Trump and his first buddy tech billionaire Elon Musk, who sunk $288 million of his personal fortunes to get the mercurial Trump re-elected, has now exploded in the public domain with a spat. The bitter attack by the Tesla CEO against the U.S. President’s economic policies indicates that there are differences in approach between the two friends of fundamental nature.
The words ” disgusting abomination” used by Musk endangers the relationship between the President and the tech billionaire, founder of TESLA EVs, xAI, SpaceX, Neural Link (Brain Mapping) and owner of social platform X, are so strong that the unpredictable Trump could sway which every way he wanted in the relationship as he is also used to using intemperate language in his social media platform Truth Social, with millions of followers. Could both gut each other with their verbal spat, in which Trump has remarkably kept his cool and not reacted violently.
An utterly frustrated Musk, who made his fortunes building a company coming to USA on a H1B visa, has a different take on every one of Trumps policies starting from immigrants, tariffs and government spending. . He continued with these for the first 130 days of Trump regime. Now after getting out of administration, he is airing his personal views in a no holds manner.
Musk walked into White House as the chief administrator of DOGE – Dept of Govt Efficiency – to slash redundant government jobs and save government expenditure. When ideological differences emerged and his co administrator wanted DOGE outside of the government, the 2024 presidential aspirant and admirer of Trump Vivek Ramaswamy was eased out to campaign for governorship of the Ohio state, where he lives.
Once inside a building next to the White House, Musk never got a room in the West Wing, the most powerful advisory group in the United States in the presidential house, he began his job in earnest. At the end of his 130 days mission, he spent $135 billion to effect a saving of $175 billion in government spending, a fraction of the $2 tn reduced later to $1 trillion he promised.
When Trump virtually offered him the last straw to pull out of DOGE, Musk was flabbergasted that the man who had been campaigning all along in 2024 to shut down his predecessor Biden from government spend for inflating budget deficit, did exactly the same of what Biden did bringing the entire situation back to square one.
Fears are being expressed in Washington DC that Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, vastly different from Biden’s Build, Back, Better initiative on climate technologies of a $1.7 trillion, might end up with an expenditure ballooning deficit to $5 trillion in the next 10 years. leaving a gaping hole in the government’s budget.
Trump’s attempts to cut taxes for the rich, for those earning over $4 million a year saving them $400,000 a year and cutting expenditure on Medicaid, Medicare, Obama care and the redefining of the Affordable Cares act leaving out 8.6 million of urban middle class from the health care net, raising the costs of medicare by $1,000 per urban household, enhancing the prices of drugs needed by the middle classes, seems to mitigate all the gains achieved by DOGE in Cutting on wasteful government expenditure.
In a vituperative outburst on his X media platform, Musk bellowed calling the Big Beautiful bill as a “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill”. He went on to say it was an abomination bill.
The bill scraped through the Congress at 215-214 by a solitary vote. It’s now hanging in balance in the senate where the republicans outnumber democrats by 53 to 47 and vice president, JD Vance, with the presiding officer of the senate, holding the tie breaking vote.
With three republicans opposing it in the senate, Trump could see the BBB through the senate 50 to 47 and if it’s a nail biting finish JD Vance can always come to the rescue with his tie breaking vote. But the bill could be gutted from its present form to make it acceptable to the section of republicans opposing the bill.
History seems to repeat itself. Joe Biden’s Build Back Better initiative with a budget of $1.7 trillion was gutted by his own democrats representing the fossil fuels lobby as it sought to promote climate change technologies against fossil fuels. The fossil fuel lobby, which influences several senators and congressmen spent about $93 billion in FY 2023-24 to lobby against climate change advocacy groups.
Biden’s Build Back Better initiative went through the drain down to about $1 trillion and yet managed to be allocated $750 billion for climate change technologies that included promoting EVs, subsidies on car sales and the batteries that went into it. But Trump’s BBB, very similar in moniker to Biden’s BBB, is likely to be gutted in its present form in the senate with Musk influencing senators. Musk said of the congressmen who voted for the bill : “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reacted to a question on Elon Musk calling Donald Trump’s tax bill as ‘a disgusting abomination. The billionaire’s aggressive intervention comes at a critical time for Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, which narrowly passed the House of Representatives last month and needs to be approved by the Senate if it is to become law.
Trump has imposed a deadline of July 4 to pass the legislation, which could define his second term and set the course for the US economy. He has heaped pressure on Republican senators who are alarmed about the package, which would slash taxes, reduce social spending and increase the federal debt.
Hours before Musk’s comments on X, Trump attacked Republican Senator Rand Paul, a staunch fiscal conservative who has taken issue with the bill’s provisions to raise the limit on how much the federal government can borrow by $5tn.
“Rand Paul has very little understanding of the BBB, especially the tremendous GROWTH that is coming,” Trump said on his Truth Social media platform on Tuesday morning. “The BBB is a big WINNER!!!”
Other fiscally conservative senators — including Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida — have called for deeper spending cuts in the bill.
Another group of Republican senators — including Susan Collins of Maine, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Josh Hawley of Missouri — have criticized the bill’s proposed cuts to Medicaid, a government healthcare scheme for lower-income and disabled Americans. They will now face the flak from their constituents back home.
Trump’s party controls the Senate by a 53-47 margin, meaning the Republicans can only afford to lose the support of three senators if the spending bill is to pass the upper chamber. Asked about Musk’s comments, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “Look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn’t change the president’s opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill, and he’s sticking to it.” But Musk’s intervention is likely to embolden the president’s Republican critics. Paul agreed with Musk on X, saying, “We can and must do better.” Lee replied: “The Senate must make this bill better.”
Musk’s broadside came five days after his high-profile send-off at the Oval Office and his dispute with the White House escalated, which he has criticized over tariff policy and blamed for not fully backing his efforts to cut $1tn from the US budget. Musk, who outsources many of the spare parts from China for TESLA and also sells TESLA cars by the huge numbers in that country, was one of those badly hit by the Tariffs heaped on China.
Musk saw his quarter line profits plummet to 71%. The stakeholders and board of directors were very much upset and asked Musk to either return to TESLA and do his job as the CEO or resign and find an alternate to run the company. Everything in Musk’s venture is dear to his heart from TESLA to Space X to Neural Link on Brain Mapping to his social media platform X which he acquired from Twitter for $44 billion. He said he would return to his flagship company running all the entities and sleep in his office if necessary to bring back the company to profit making days once again.
The administration on Tuesday sought to mollify disgruntled supporters of Musk’s cost-cutting task force, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, by presenting Congress with a small slither of cuts the initiative identified — including contracts related to diversity programmes and more than $1bn in funding for NPR and PBS — to be enshrined in law. (IPA Service)
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