‘Back home': Donald Trump's Elon Musk threat shocks the world

News.com.au

20 hours ago

ANALYSIS
July 4 is traditionally a time of fireworks for the United States. But Elon Musk got the party started early.
Not only has his latest attempt to launch his enormous Starship rocket failed in flames, he's initiated another online flame-war with his former employer – US President Donald Trump.
This time, it's explosive.
'Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,' Trump quipped as their war of words flared again this week.
Former Special Government Employee turned born-again CEO Elon Musk is angry.
Not at the Trump administration's anti-immigrant agenda.
But with the way it handles money.
Musk, the founding figure behind Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has called the budget 'utterly insane and destructive' and 'political suicide.' He's spent much of the past fortnight lobbying Republicans to vote against it.
'This bill raises the debt ceiling by $5 TRILLION, the biggest increase in history, putting America in the fast lane to debt slavery!' the world's richest man posted on his personal social media platform, X (formerly Twitter).
Trump was busy trying to railroad Republican senators and house representatives into casting his Make America Great Again (MAGA) agenda in concrete before the national July 4 celebrations (FRIDAY NIGHT). But he found time to fire back.
The 47th President used his own personal social media service, Truth Social, to threaten the cancellation of government contracts with Musk's companies.
'You know, he can lose a lot more than that, I'll tell you right now,' Trump added. 'Elon can lose a lot more than that.'
The Commander-in-Chief insists his Federal Government spending bill is 'big, beautiful'.
His former 'First Buddy' calls it a 'disgusting abomination'.
Trump's promise to slash government spending was the centrepiece of his 2024 election pitch. Musk was his greatest cheerleader, pitching $440 million towards Republican campaign costs.
But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has done the math on the President's Big Beautiful Bill and found it will add more than $A5 trillion to the $A55 trillion US national debt.
And that has Musk feeling he hasn't gotten his money's worth.
Party games
Musk's return to full-time CEO has done nothing to change the fortunes of his troubled electric car manufacturing brand, Tesla. Vehicle deliveries over the past three months are down a record 13 per cent on the previous year.
The three-month Trump-Musk bromance evaporated in an emotional outburst on June 5.
Musk was unhappy with the impact of Trump's sweeping tariffs on imports. And the draft of the administration's first budget wasn't what he expected.
So Musk lashed out.
The world's richest man accused the world's most powerful man of suppressing his presence in the Epstein Files – a list of collaborative sex offenders, including Britain's Prince Andrew.
Then, the South African-Canadian-US multinational appeared to quietly back down. After all, a lot of money rides on the survival of his SpaceX rocket launch contracts.
Now Musk says he doesn't want Trump's money anyway.
He says his hi-tech cars should never have been given government subsidies in the first place. And nor should any others.
'I am literally saying CUT IT ALL,' Musk retorted in a tweet. 'Now.'
And he's maintaining his rage against big government spending.
'Hitting the debt ceiling is the only thing that will actually force the government to cut waste and fraud,' Musk added. (Previously, he had insisted DOGE could do that job.)
'That's why the debt ceiling legislation exists!'
Earlier this year, Musk promised to donate an additional $440 million towards Republican midterm election campaigning. Now, like Trump, Musk is threatening to run personally chosen candidates against Republican politicians who defy his will.
'They will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,' Musk threatened at the weekend. 'Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.'
A few hours later, he posted: 'If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day. Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.'
It's a strategy that hasn't worked so far for disgruntled Australian billionaire Clive Palmer. But Palmer doesn't have anywhere near the cash to splash as Elon does. Or a privately owned social media platform.
From welfare to warfare
Trump on Monday accused Musk of collecting 'more subsidy than any human being in history, by far'.
And the former reality TV host and property developer has his fingers on Capitol Hill's purse strings.
'No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE,' Trump added. 'Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!'
To add insult to injury, the creation of DOGE was a personal ambition of Musk's. He spent the first four months of Trump's second term wielding personally appointed 'auditors' as a metaphorical chainsaw against uncooperative government staff.
But his promise to find $US2 trillion in savings in the first year swiftly evaporated to just $200 million.
This failure to deliver upset Trump.
Now, after Musk quit his White House role last month, DOGE is in Trump's hands.
'We might have to put DOGE on Elon,' the President told reporters before boarding Marine One on the White House lawn Wednesday. 'DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible?'
It's not the first time the convicted fraudster has made the threat.
He vowed to 'terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts' early in June. 'I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!' he added on Truth Social.
Now, Trump has reminded Musk that he also has his fingers on the reins of ICE – the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
But Trump's failure to cut the ballooning US budget deficit has also unsettled some old-school Republicans. They, too, have attracted the President's ire.
'For all cost-cutting Republicans, of which I am one, REMEMBER, you still have to get re-elected,' he threatened Tuesday.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis responded by announcing he would not seek re-election.
He warned in his retirement notice that it was 'increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species.'
Abandoning the prospect of re-election will give him 18 months of 'pure freedom to call the balls and strikes as I see fit', he said.
Trump has reportedly responded by nominating his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as a contender to fill Tillis' vacated senate seat.
A return to empathy?
Elon Musk has had a change of heart.
Or, at least, he says so.
He's called criticism of his chainsaw act at the Republican congress earlier this year a 'valid point'.
'Milei gave me the chainsaw backstage and I ran with it, but, in retrospect, it lacked empathy,' he posted on X on Monday.
He was referring to Argentina's right-wing populist President Javier Milei. His gift of a glittering chainsaw sparked Musk's incomprehensible onstage diatribe and display.
But it's a confession that appears to clash with the billionaire's self-proclaimed personal philosophy.
Recently, Musk blamed the world's ills on the human compulsion to share and understand the feelings of another.
'Like, there's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself,' Musk insisted during an interview with Joe Rogan in February.
'The fundamental weakness of Western civilisation is empathy. The empathy exploit …
'So, I think, you know, empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot.'
His critics pointed out that empathy is what sociopaths lack. It's also what they exploit.
Others are now pointing to the utter failure of alternate parties to make a dent in US elections.
Musk's chances of becoming the 48th President are nil. That's not just because he isn't a home-born US citizen. Nor his appallingly low popularity among US voters.
The Libertarian Party is the third-largest political movement in America. Its best performance was in 2016, when it secured 3.26 per cent of the presidential vote.
It's a consequence of the 'first past the post' voting system. It's 'winner takes all'. Margins and preferences aren't reflected in overall outcomes.
But political scientist Bernard Tamas has told US media that minor parties can be a powerful irritation.
'They emerge very quickly, they run a bunch of candidates all over the country, and then they cause one or both major parties major pain,' Tamas says. 'They basically are pulling away votes.'
Deflecting even two or three per cent away from a frontrunner can cause a seat to flip – but only between the Republican or Democrat frontrunners.
Few such third parties survive.
'The most successful third parties in America last about a decade,' Tamas adds. 'Once they become too much of a threat, the major parties start stealing their rhetoric, their ideology'.
And even if that ideology wins, the 47th President has proven it won't necessarily be put into effect.