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First off, Trump didn't do anything wrong. He's trying to negotiate with all sides to get his large one-bill legislation past first, and then move on to other debt reduction in other legislation after.
I think Elon Musk, who is otherwise an unquestionably brilliant guy, just had a bad day and went thermonuclear with a bunch of posts on "X" to try and intimidate Trump to give him his way. Trump for months has given Musk unprecedented access to the White House for an un-elected, un-appointed person. And I think Musk, who is used to being an executive who has the ultimate power to eventually say "my way or the highway", and at some point Musk got fatigued with the tedious legislative negotiation process and had an unfortunate emotional outburst, that he particularly unfortunately chose to do very publicly on "X".
And I think Musk realized after the fact that he made a terrible mistake, and has quietly tried to reconcile with Trump.
But Trump is just going to take a while o cool off, or maybe Trump just truly is busy with other larger issues, such as the Gaza/Israel and Russia/Ukraine wars, and China negotiations, and discussions with Senators to get his legislation passed.
I think at some point Trump and Musk will reconcile, but some of what Musk said was highly personal, where Musk really went for blood in his "X" posts (alleging Trump was going to be prosecuted for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein and under-age girls, and calling for Trump to be impeached ), and the level of slander and hurt attempted on Trump is difficult to forgive, or a least to forgive quickly.
And I think the nature of Musk's "X" attacks on Trump will permanently diminish Trump's level of trust in Musk, that Musk publicly tried to cut into Trump that deeply.
Musk has a history of manic-depressive behavior that he has been open about. And has even admitted in the past that he self medicates with Ketamine when he "gets to a really dark place". Musk has a history of blowing up in a similar thermonuclear way with business associates, and with his previous wives. He works non-stop for days and weeks and months obsessively, and at some point he blows off some steam after being so relentlessly immersed in his projects. That is how he has accomplished so much, how he has become the richest man on Earth.
Last I looked, Musk was worth about 422 billion dollars.
The next closest is Jeff Besos at 220 billion, less than half of Musk's fortune. So even if Musk temporarily declines in value even 10 or 20 billion, he's still by far the wealthiest man on Earth.
And he's not just Richie Rich or Uncle Scrooge in a vault counting his billions, he's a genius who has earned it 10 times over. And with other technologies he is simultaneously developing now, such as Tesla, rockets and space exploration, Starlink, self-driving car technology, surgically implanted brain chips that will allow paralyzed people to move things with their minds alone (Neuro-link), and other developments with open-source AI technology.
Regardless of any temporary setbacks, Musk is positioned in the next few years to become the world's first trillionaire.
If Elon Musk did nothing else further in his life, he has still changed the world and improved millions of lives immeasurably. And he is far from done inventing even more new and world-changing technologies.
So... the guy had a very public tantrum, and said some bad stuff about Trump, that even Jeffrey Eptsein's former lawyer said was absolutely untrue, that there was nothing incriminating Epstein had on Trump, that Epstein freely admitted to lawyer Schoen on many occasions (and that it was not betrayal of attorney-client privilege for Schoen to disclose this, Epstein was very open and emphatic about it, on many occasions, Epstein wanted everyone to know Trump did nothing wrong.)
Whatever Musk's intent in the moment, he has not damaged Trump.
So Musk's life and advancements go on.
And Trump's life and advancements go on.
And whether they reconcile or not, the work of both goes on.
Although I think they will reconcile. There is a great deal of good in the world they can do together. It just may take a while.
And DOGE goes on too, and has already identified at least $175 billion in fraud and waste, and at this stage DOGE investigators have not yet not even reviewed even 1% of the total U S national budget. The DOGE team Elon Musk started now continues as planned without him, by dozens of others. Musk had only planned to be part of it for 4 months to get it started, and it is continued now by others who are generously volunteering their valuable time as well. Where they, like Musk, are sacrificing time they could be using to further expand and build their own businesses and innovative technologies.
I think that is what set Musk off, that he spent four months of his time, that he literally could have earned tens of billions of dollars with, and that he further endured having Tesla cars and dealerships burned in hatred by the Democrat-Bolshevik Left.
That he endured all that, and after all those 16 and 20-hour days and weeks and months rooting out all that fraud and waste, the current negotiated bill seemed to him that Trump and the broader GOP (and certainly not the Democrats !!) didn't appreciate and utilize the work he did at great personal cost to reduce debt and waste.
And I'm sympathetic to that, but obviously, his "X" post rants were not the way to get past that road-block.
I hope that legislative obstruction will be gotten past in the long run.
And while the current legislation Rand Paul, Ron Johnson and others are saying is not enough, who are pushing for greater spending cuts and deficit reduction before the bill can be passed, I think the Republicans need to pass it with the reductions they can get now, with the narrow GOP House and Senate majorities they have, to then use that political capital to widen their majorities in the 2026 mid-term, and then go for further reductions when they have the numbers to do it.
What Trump is doing is very ambitious and high-stakes, on all fronts, and I think he will have much more leverage and popular support for greater legislative reforms 6 months or a year from now.
