President Donald Trump on Thursday called Tesla CEO Elon Musk “CRAZY” and threatened to cut his companies’ government contracts as the two men feuded over a major tax bill.
“Go ahead, make my day,” Musk promptly responded.
In addition to leading the electric-vehicle maker Tesla, Musk’s businesses include the space exploration and satellite-communication company SpaceX, artificial-intelligence company xAI, tunnel-digger The Boring Company, tech firm Neuralink and the social media site X.
Tesla’s share price, which was already trading sharply lower, tanked after Trump’s latest comments.
The stunning blow-up between the world’s richest man and the president of the United States comes less than a week after they swapped compliments during an Oval Office send-off celebrating Musk’s time leading the Department of Government Efficiency.
Trump in a bitter Truth Social post Thursday afternoon wrote that Musk was “wearing thin” by the end of his tenure as a “special government employee.”
“I asked him to leave,” Trump claimed.
The angry swipe came after Musk blasted the president amid an escalating clash stemming from the mega-billionaire’s vocal opposition to Trump’s massive budget bill.
Trump said in the Oval Office earlier Thursday that Musk was “upset” that the package cuts electric vehicle credits.
“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!” Trump wrote in the social media post.
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk (R) speak before departing the White House on his way to his South Florida home in Mar-a-Lago in Florida on March 14, 2025.
Roberto Schmidt | Afp | Getty Images
Musk has aggressively trashed the bill on the grounds that it will add trillions of dollars to the nation’s deficits. He is actively urging Senate Republicans to “kill the bill,” which comprises a huge swath of Trump’s domestic agenda.
The president wrote in a second Truth Social post, “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
SpaceX is one of the nation’s largest federal contractors, securing $3.8 billion over hundreds of government contracts in fiscal year 2024 alone, The New York Times reported. The company has taken more than $20 billion in contracts from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and other agencies since 2008, according to data from FedScout.
A Washington Post analysis published in February found that Musk and his companies have received at least $38 billion from the government in the form of contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits over more than two decades.
Some of Musk’s companies are on track to take in additional federal dollars for years to come, either from existing contracts or from newly inked government business. SpaceX, for instance, is among frontrunners to win a crucial part of President Donald Trump‘s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield plan, Reuters reported.
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— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
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