Billionaire Elon Musk on Saturday doubled down on his distaste for President Trump’s sprawling tax and spending cuts bill, arguing the legislation that Republican senators are scrambling to pass would kill jobs and bog down burgeoning industries.
“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country,” Musk wrote on X on Saturday as the Senate was scheduled to call a vote to open debate on the nearly 1,000-page bill. “It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, whose birthday is also Saturday, later posted that the bill would be “political suicide for the Republican Party.”
The criticisms reopen a recent fiery conflict between the former head of the Department of Government Efficiency and the administration he recently left. They also represent yet another headache for Republican Senate leaders who have spent the weekend working overtime to get the legislation through their chamber so it can pass by Mr. Trump’s Fourth of July deadline.
Musk has previously made his opinions about Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” clear. In late May, just a few days before he officially left his post in the federal government, he told “CBS Sunday morning” he was “disappointed” with the bill’s price tag.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told CBS News.
“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” Musk added. “But I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”
Following a laudatory celebration in the Oval Office, his language became more aggressive and he blasted the bill as “pork-filled” and a “disgusting abomination.”
“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” he wrote on X earlier this month. In another post, the wealthy GOP donor who had recently forecasted that he’d step back from political donations threatened to fire lawmakers who “betrayed the American people.”
When Mr. Trump clapped back to say he was disappointed with Musk, back-and-forth fighting erupted and quickly escalated. Musk suggested without evidence that Mr. Trump, who spent the first part of the year as one of his closest allies, was mentioned in files related to sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
The president also threatened to cut off federal subsidies and contracts to Elon Musk’s companies. SpaceX receives tens of billions of dollars in federal money, most of which are in the form of federal grants from NASA.
“He’s got a lot of money, he gets a lot of subsidy,” Mr. Trump told reporters on June 6. “So we’ll take a look at that. Only if it’s fair for him and for the country. I would certainly think about it, but it has to be fair.”
Musk ultimately tried to make nice with the administration, saying he regretted some of his posts that “went too far.” Trump responded in kind in an interview with The New York Post, saying, “Things like that happen. I don’t blame him for anything.”
The shocking rift came after Musk donated $277 million to Trump’s presidential campaign and other Republican candidates in the last election cycle, according to campaign finance records.
It’s unclear how Musk’s latest broadsides will influence the fragile peace he and the president had enjoyed in recent weeks. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk has spent recent weeks focused on his businesses, and his political influence has waned since he left the administration.