And the Interesting Thing is on June 6

From Bros to Foes to…Détente?

The once-chummy relationship between the president and Elon Musk unraveled publicly and spectacularly on Thursday, devolving into trolling and a heated exchange of accusations, insults, and political threats across the respective social media platforms they own.

After standing together in the Oval Office on May 30 to commemorate the completion of Musk’s tenure as a “special government employee,” cracks in the relationship began to show on Tuesday when Musk lambasted the president’s signature “One Big Beautiful” tax bill as a budget-busting “abomination.”

“This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” Musk wrote in a post on X. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.” He followed up on his attack, saying on X that the tax bill “more than defeats all the cost savings achieved by the DOGE team at great personal cost and risk.”

At the time, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt brushed aside the criticism; “The President already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn’t change the president’s opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill and he’s sticking to it,” she told reporters during her daily press briefing.

Then, 13 minutes into an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump laid out his frustrations with Musk, telling reporters that he was “very surprised” and “very disappointed” in his attacks on the bill. “I’ve always liked Elon. And so I was very surprised. You saw the words he had for me, and he hasn’t said anything about me that’s bad. I’d rather have him criticize me than the bill, because the bill is incredible,” The president than suggested that Musk suffered from “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a popular canard the president uses to diminish someone who publicly disagrees with him.

After the president’s remarks, carried live by every cable news network, it was off to the races. Musk responded in real time, posting “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote in response to a video of Trump’s comments. “Such ingratitude,” he added.

In subsequent posts, Musk called for Trump to be impeached, suggested his trade tariffs would cause a US recession, threatened to decommission SpaceX capsules used to transport NASA astronauts and insinuated the president was associated with the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump, who had previously defended Musk against charges of corruption and self-dealing, took to his own social media platform to suggest Musk had soured on his “big beautiful bill” because it would end policies that benefited the electric-car maker. “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!” In a separate, subsequent post, the president added “The easiest way to save money in our Budget . . . is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” in an apparent threat to end billions of dollars’ worth of business between the US government and Musk’s companies, including SpaceX and Starlink.

Shares in Tesla fell by almost 11% following Trump’s remarks and were down 14% on the day, erasing more than $152 billion from its market valuation— taking it below the $1 trillion benchmark—in its largest one-day drop in value ever. The sell-off cost Musk an estimated $34 billion. The president also took a financial hit, the 8% decline in Trump Media & Technology Group cost the president about $202 million, and the roughly 10% decline of his Official Trump meme coin, potentially cost him nearly $900 million.

While there appeared to be signs Friday morning of a potential détente, the president told CNN this morning that he is “not even thinking about” Musk and won’t be speaking to him in the near future. “I’m not even thinking about Elon. He’s got a problem. The poor guy’s got a problem,” Trump said. Asked if he had a call with Musk, he responded: “No. I won’t be speaking to him for a while I guess, but I wish him well.” Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that the president “is considering selling or giving away the red Tesla that he purchased earlier this year.” Trump bought the Model S vehicle as part of a photo-op at the White House aimed at promoting Elon Musk’s business . As of Thursday evening, the car was still parked outside the West Wing.

And the interesting thing is, beyond the mere spectacle of the world’s richest man and world’s most powerful man engaging in a middle school-level food fight online, they both risk significant losses. The Washington Post has reported that “over the years, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits, often at critical moments” for his companies. The total amount is probably larger: the Post analysis included only publicly available contracts, omitting classified defense and intelligence work for the federal government. An additional 52 ongoing contracts with seven government agencies — including NASA, the Defense Department, and the General Services Administration — are on track to potentially pay Musk’s companies an additional $11.8 billion over the next few years.

Even without tearing up contracts, Trump could take a more insidious route: the regulatory bottleneck. Agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) could slow or stall key Musk projects. The FAA could restrict Starship launch expansions, while NHTSA could ramp up scrutiny of Tesla’s full self-driving and autopilot features—putting product development at risk.

Meanwhile, Musk contributed nearly $300 million to Republicans in 2024, the vast majority of which went to Trump, but likely propped up some vulnerable congressional races that kept the GOP slim House majority. With a history of supporting Democrats—he said he voted for former President Joe Biden in 2020 and once gave a tour of SpaceX to then-President Barack Obama, he could just as easily fund Democrats in the 2026 mid-term elections or primary opponents against congressional Republicans.

With more than 220 million followers on X, he can make mischief for both Congress and the White House. Musk used his X platform to rally support for Trump, but also provided a platform for far-right views that helped promote the MAGA agenda. Theoretically, Musk could use his own X account to criticize Trump with as much regularity as he pumped the president’s policies. This played out on Thursday afternoon, when Musk posted a poll on X, asking whether it was time “to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle.” More than 80 percent of the nearly 5.5 million respondents so far have voted “yes.”

Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Faces Deepening Senate Pushback Amid Musk Attacks, Conservative Revolt

The sprawling bill to enact President Trump’s “big, beautiful” agenda is losing momentum in the Senate in the face of the aforementioned blistering attacks from Elon Musk and outspoken opposition from conservatives.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) warned colleagues at a special conference meeting Wednesday that there are two likely “no” votes against the bill within the Senate GOP conference. While Crapo did not publicly name them, most assume the two holdouts are Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Johnson (R-WI), both of whom have issued increasingly sharp rebukes of the bill’s size and fiscal impact.

Senator Paul has said he cannot support the bill because it raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion—enough borrowing authority to last past the 2026 midterm elections. “I will not be responsible for continuing this.” Senator Johnson, for his part, said “This cannot be the new normal,” Johnson said, blasting CBO projections that the federal deficit will hit $2.2 trillion next year and balloon to $2.7 trillion by 2035.

While fiscal conservatives attack the bill’s deficit implications, moderates in the GOP are sounding alarms over deep proposed cuts to entitlement programs—particularly Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Jerry Moran (R-KS) have expressed reservations. They are especially concerned about how the bill would shift administrative and financial responsibilities for SNAP onto states; a move Collins said would disproportionately impact Maine and other rural areas. “It switches a lot of the administrative costs onto the state,” Collins noted, saying she’s “evaluating” the Medicaid and SNAP provisions.

An additional sticking point involves clean energy tax cuts in President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The House-passed bill would roll back some of the clean energy tax credits under the law, including an earlier phasing out of a tax break for clean energy vehicles. In April, Sens. Murkowksi (R-AK), Curtis (R-UT), Moran (R-KS) and Tillis (R-NC)—one of the most vulnerable senate Republicans on the ballot in 2026, penned a letter to the Senate majority leader to emphasize the importance of maintaining a stable and predictable tax framework to promote domestic energy development. "While we support fiscal responsibility and prudent efforts to streamline the tax code, we caution against the full-scale repeal of current credits, which could lead to significant disruptions for the American people and weaken our position as a global energy leader.”

On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an updated analysis of the bill, and a separate report on the impact of health coverage. In its current form, the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade (the net of $3.7 trillion in tax cuts spending cuts of $1.2 trillion). CBO also projects that 16 million Americans could lose health coverage through 2034—10.9 million as a result of changes to Medicaid and 5.1 million due to new Affordable Care enrollment rules and expiring tax credits.

And the interesting thing is, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), dropped a bombshell this week, revealing that she had not read the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in its entirety. That was not surprising in and of itself, but the fact that after learning about a 10-year ban on state regulation of AI, tucked-into the bill on pages 278-279, she no longer supports the bill. She joins the growing list of the president’s staunchest House GOP allies who have come out in opposition of the bill that they voted for two weeks ago.

Economy Adds 140,000 Jobs in May; Unemployment Rate Holds at 4.2%

The US economy added 139,000 jobs in May, better than expected, but hiring was slower than the downwardly revised 147,000 posts added in April, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS also revised down the March figures, bringing the average jobs gains for the year until May to 124,000, compared with 168,000 in 2024. The unemployment rate held at 4.2%.

At the same time, industries that are more exposed to tariffs flashed warning signs. Manufacturing jobs dropped 8,000 last month, the most this year, while employment growth in transportation and warehousing rose slightly after declining in each of the prior two months.

And the interesting thing is, the president used the jobs report to badger Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell—again—to cut rates. “‘Too Late’ at the Fed is a disaster!” he posted on social media, a reference to Fed Chair Jerome Powell. “Despite him, our Country is doing great. Go for a full point, Rocket Fuel!” The president’s latest attacks on Powell came after the European Central Bank on Thursday cut interest rates by a quarter point. The Fed has paused a rate-cutting cycle that began in 2024 as it weighs the effects of Trump’s tariffs, which many economists expect to increase inflation while cooling growth. Trump and Powell met last week, with the president telling the Fed chief he was making a “mistake” by not cutting rates. It’s worth noting that the Fed cut rates by one full point in total during President Biden’s final year in office, and the last time the central bank made a single rate cut of a full percentage point was in March 2020 to address economic fallout from the onset of Covid-19.

World Commemorates 81^st Anniversary of D-Day

A tribute today to the surviving veterans—now in their late 90’s or centenarians—who returned to Normandy, France to commemorate the June 6, 1944, beach landings that played a pivotal role in U.S. and allied forces defeating the Nazis 11 months later. With the march of time, the number of attendees is only getting smaller. The Best Defense Foundation, a non-profit that has been organizing trips to Normandy since 2004, last year brought 50 veterans for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. This year, the number is 23. Because the Department of Veterans Affairs does not track their numbers, it’s unclear how many American D-Day veterans are still alive, but estimates are that there may be hundreds worldwide.

A total of 4,427 Allied troops were killed on D-Day itself, including 2,510 Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded. In the ensuing Battle of Normandy, 73,000 Allied forces were killed and 153,000 wounded. The exact German casualties are not known, but historians estimate between 4,000 and 9,000 men were killed, wounded or missing during the D-Day invasion alone. About 22,000 German soldiers are among the many buried around Normandy.

And the interesting thing is, The New York Times is out with a fascinating story on James Stagg, the UK chief meteorological adviser to Dwight Eisenhower, whose weather forecast determined if the invasion would happen.

That’s all for today. See you back here again tomorrow!