Washington: US President Donald Trump has said that the “easiest way” for the government to save money would be to “terminate” contracts and subsidies going to billionaire and former adviser Elon Musk, amid an escalating public war of words between the Commander-in-Chief and the world’s wealthiest man.
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote on Thursday on his own social media platform Truth Social. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!” the US President said.
Trump’s threat came after Musk accused the US President of “ingratitude” and said he would have lost the election without him, after the billionaire donated more than $250 million to help elect him last year.
Minutes earlier, Trump wrote that he had asked Musk to leave the White House, and claimed the Tesla CEO “just went CRAZY!”
“Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY,” the President said. (There has never been a federal mandate that prohibited Americans from buying gasoline-powered cars.)
Trump insinuated in an Oval Office press conference on Thursday that the Tesla CEO opposes his “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which Musk has been ranting about all week, because he is “upset” the electric vehicle incentive was removed, adding that he is not sure he will remain friends with Musk and alleging Musk “knew the inner workings of the bill”.
Musk didn’t reject the accusation about the EV tax credits in a tweet responding to Trump, writing it was “very unfair!!” that oil and gas subsidies were left in the bill, adding in a subsequent tweet “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!”
The breakup between the President of the US and the world’s richest man is unfurling much like their relationship started — rapidly, intensely and very publicly.
As President Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office on Thursday with Germany’s leader, he lamented his soured relationship with Elon Musk, his adviser-turned-social media antagonist.
Trump said he was “very disappointed” with Musk after the billionaire and former Trump backer lambasted the President’s signature bill of tax cuts and spending plans.
“Whatever,” Musk wrote on his social media platform while responding to Trump in real time.
Politicians and their donor patrons rarely see eye to eye. But the magnitude of Musk’s support for Trump, spending at least $250 million backing his campaign, and the scope of free reign the President gave him to slash and delve into the government with the Department of Government Efficiency is eclipsed only by the speed of their falling out. Musk announced his support for Trump shortly after the then-candidate was nearly assassinated on stage at a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally last July. (IANS)
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