3 weeks ago
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President Donald Trump has said that he is "disappointed" in Elon Musk after the X owner and entrepreneur slammed the Trump-backed "Big Beautiful Bill."
"Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore," Trump said to reporters in the Oval Office when he was asked about the topic.
"He knew the inner workings of the bill better than anybody sitting here... He knew everything about it. He had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem and he only developed the problem when he found out we're going to have to cut the EV mandate," Trump added in his comments. He went onto say that the US needs gas cars as well as electric.
Musk responded to Trump's comments, posting on X, "False, 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!"
https://twiter.com/elonmusk/status/1930662301792977094
The comments from both Trump and Musk come after the Tesla founder ripped into the "Big Beautiful Bill" as a "disgusting abomination" for the levels of spending it contains.
"This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it," Musk posted earlier this week. He continued to sound the alarm over spending after coming out against the bill and said that the bill should not increase the federal deficit.
In response to Trump saying that Musk was upset over the EV mandate getting taken out of the bill, Musk replied on X, "Whatever. Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill. In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this! Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill. Slim and beautiful is the way."
He reiterated that Congress instead needs to pass a "Slim Beautiful Bill" instead of a "Big Beautiful Bill."
As it stands, the bill, which has been passed by the House in Congress, extends the 2017 Trump tax cuts as well as installs a number of Trump agenda items. One point that those in Musk's corner have taken issue with is that the bill raises the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the bill will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, which the Trump White House has said is false. Some GOP senators have said that the bill is facing enough opposition in the Senate that it may need more reworking for it to pass.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said of the CBO report earlier this week, “There hasn’t been a single staffer in the entire Congressional Budget Office that has contributed to a Republican [campaign] since the year 2000, but guess what, there have been many staffers within the Congressional Budget Office who have contributed to Democrat candidates in every single cycle."
“So unfortunately, this is an institution in our country that has become partisan and political, and we are very confident in our own economic analysis of this bill, there is $1.6 trillion in savings," Leavitt added at the time.
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