Eva Artesona
Reporting from Georgia

Steve Brown, a freelancer and podcaster in the swing state of Georgia, says "Elon Musk played a pivotal role in President Trump being elected."

"I don't think there's any doubt about that. He was a very popular figure, charismatic, and he had the money to, to help," says Brown, who is a member of the Fayette County Republican Party.

Brown thinks Musk's lack of political experience led to his exit from the White House.

"I think he came in with all the best of intentions. I think he was truly sincere with what he wanted to accomplish. And I don't think Musk understood how Congress works, and that was the deathblow to his efforts.

He adds: "I don't think it [Musk's appointment] backfired. Although he was so high-energy going in, and now he looks like a defeated man coming out. I don't think he understands how Congress works and how convoluted that system is and how difficult it is to get a budget through Congress."

Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu
Live reporter

Image source, Reuters

One point of contention in the breakdown of Trump and Musk's relationship centres on the next administrator of US space agency Nasa.

Musk recommended his long-time friend Jared Isaacman, who Trump nominated even before he took office. Musk has long had a goal of space travel to Mars, which he pursues through his Space X company - it has several contracts with Nasa.

But Isaacman's confirmation ran into issues after it was revealed that he had previously donated to several Democratic campaigns over 15 years.

Some of these donations happened as recently as 2024, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign donations. Their records show that Isaacman also donated to at least one Republican candidate in Pennsylvania years ago.

"After a thorough review of prior associations, I am hereby withdrawing the nomination of Jared Isaacman to head NASA," Trump wrote on Truth Social 31 May.

At the White House today, Trump said withdrawing Isaacman's nomination had upset Musk.

"Look, we won, we get certain privileges and one of the privileges is we don't have to appoint a Democrat," Trump said.

Elon Musk has now started singling out House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate majority leader John Thune in a series of posts on X.

He seems to be digging deep into the archive, unearthing a post written by Johnson in March 2023, in which he criticised the Biden administration, saying federal spending and debt "is not sustainable!"

Reacting to the post, external, Musk writes: "Where is the Mike Johnson of 2023!?", appearing to want to point out the contrast with Johnson's position now in support of Trump's spending bill - which is at the root of Musk and Trump's fall out.

He also targets Thune, external, linking to an opinion piece written by the Senate leader in 2011, titled "Balanced-budget amendment or bust".

He separately reposts a video of Thune speaking in 2020 in Congress, which was posted by news outlet The Hill, with the caption: "Where is the John Thune of 2020??"

Musk appears to be digging out some receipts.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Washington

Image source, Getty Images

For the last six months at the White House, I've been a first-hand witness to what many in Washington's gossipy political circles termed the "bromance" between Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

For me, the most memorable moments have perhaps been Musk's presence in the cabinet meetings. At one meeting, for which I was in the Cabinet Room, Musk was sitting comfortably at the head of a very long table - with a Maga hat on - alongside all the formal members of the Trump cabinet.

At another, later cabinet meeting, Trump invited cabinet members to voice any displeasure they might have had with Musk amid growing speculation that some were tiring of his cost-cutting at their agencies. Nobody spoke up.

And just last week, I watched as Trump threw Musk a warm farewell in the Oval Office, promising that Musk would "be with us, always, even if he was no longer working in the administration".

All that is over - and their relationship has rapidly devolved into a very public spat as the two men trade barbs less than a week after that farewell.

"Elon and I had a great relationship," Trump said during his Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. "I don't know if we will anymore."

It got worse from there, with Trump threatening to cut Musk's government contracts, that "nobody wanted" his Teslas, and he "just went CRAZY".

Many saw it coming. At the outset of the administration, American TV pundits opined that the White House would not be big enough for the two men, and that inevitably they would fall out.

It appears that they were right.

Musk is continuing to fire off inflammatory posts on his social media account.

He suggests his influence will last longer than Trump's in a response to conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer - who has asked what Republican lawmakers might do now, following this feud.

"Oh and some food for thought as they ponder this question: Trump has 3.5 years left as president, but I will be around for 40+ years…" Musk responds.

From first buddies to first foes?published at 19:48 British Summer Time 5 June

19:48 BST 5 June

Nomia Iqbal
North America correspondent

From first buddies to now enemies?

The Trump-Musk alliance has been fracturing at a rapid pace in public ever since the tech billionaire left his temporary government post last week.

At first it seemed to have ended all very nicely with a special goodbye in the oval office - Musk even got a golden key.

He later said he felt he couldn’t criticise the administration, but now he’s been firing shots left, right and centre - laying into Trump’s tax policy bill and urging lawmakers to ‘kill the bill.’

Trump said he was disappointed, to which Musk has hit back hard in a way it's really going to hurt - suggesting his big donation won Trump the election.

Trump’s administration has often been compared to Julius Caesar – the Roman emperor with unrestrained power and excess.

Put the world’s most powerful man and the world’s richest man together – perhaps they were always destined to collide. After all there can't be two Caesars at the same time.

After a flurry of posts from Elon Musk, US President Donald Trump has now taken to social media as well.

He wrote two posts on his own platform, Truth Social:

"Elon was wearing thin, I asked him to leave, 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 writes.

He then says that the "easiest way to save money" in his signature tax bill is to "terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts".

It seems Elon Musk has been trawling through President Trump's old tweets.

He found one Trump wrote back in 2012, in which the president says that no member of Congress should be eligible for re-election if the budget isn't balanced - Musk now reposts that with a simple "100%" emoji.

"Wise words," is his comment on another, in which a 2013 Trump bemoans Republicans extending the debt ceiling.

The tech billionaire has also retweeted another user's compilation of similar political posts of Trump's from more than a decade ago, to which Musk says: Where is this guy today??

As Trump and Musk's relationship takes a turn, let's take a look back at some of their most memorable moments.

They include the tech billionaire wielding a chainsaw at a conservative conference alongside Argentinian President Javier Milei; bringing his four-year-old son to meetings at the White House; and Trump picking out which Tesla to buy on the White House's lawn.

Image source, X

Elon Musk has posted another tweet.

"Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?" he writes, letting people vote.

After just over 23 minutes, about 260,000 people have already voted, with 84% saying "yes".

Natalie Sherman
New York business reporter

Tesla shares are sinking as the tensions between Trump and chief executive Elon Musk spill out into the open.

They started dropping hard around noon, when Trump lit into his billionaire advisor, and are now trading down roughly 9%.

Investors in the company were already having a hard time this year, with shares down more than 10% since January, as Musk’s alliance with Trump led to backlash against the brand and concerns he was not paying enough attention to the company.

Its business also could be hurt by a proposal to end tax credits for buyers of electric vehicles – a plan tucked into the spending bill that has ripped open the breach between the two men.

It’s a sharp turn from the mood immediately after the election, when shares popped on hopes the friendship would deliver benefits to the company.

The first of Musk's posts targeting President Trump's tax and spending bill came just as a news conference between Trump and German Chancellor Musk was getting under way. Here's a taste of what he posted:

• He reposted a tweet that Trump made in 2012, which said: "No member of Congress should be eligible for re-election if our country's budget is not balanced - deficits not allowed!"
• Musk reposted it with the comment: "I couldn't agree more!"
• While Trump defended what he calls the 'big beautiful bill' with Merz, Musk labelled it a big, ugly spending bill, saying it should be slimmed down: "Slim Beautiful Bill for the win"
• Musk then replies to his own tweet, saying: Keep the good, remove the bad"
• During the Merz meeting, Trump says Musk knew that the administration would take out the Electric Vehicle (EV) mandate of the bill
• Musk replies to this directly, posting: "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!"

Image source, Reuters

The simmering tensions between Musk and Trump began boiling over this week, when Musk hit out at Trump's so-called "big, beautiful bill" - Trump's signature tax and spending bill.

On Tuesday, Musk described it as a "disgusting abomination", in a widening rift between the two.

On Wednesday, the tech billionaire called on Americans to tell their representatives in Washington to "kill the bill". He wrote on X earlier this week that the bill would add to the US budget deficit and saddle Americans with "crushing" debt.

And on Thursday, Trump cracked. During an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Merz, he said he was "disappointed" in Musk's criticism of the bill.

"Elon and I had a great relationship, I don't know if we will anymore," he told Merz and the press pool.

Meanwhile on X, Musk has been re-earthing and reposting some of Trump's older tweets from 2012 and 2013, where he criticised Republicans raising the debt ceiling.

One hour ago, Musk claimed that Trump would have lost the election without him.

We'll be following the fall-out here as it happens, so stay with us.

Musk is continuing to go after the budget bill and Trump on social media.

The feuding between the pair who at one time were seen as quite close friends has rapidly intensified over the course of the day.

Musk has just posted again on X, the social media platform he owns, somewhat taunting Trump.

"Remember this?" he says while tagging Trump. The post includes an older tweet from when Musk brought Teslas to the White House and Trump sang his praises.

Trump told reporters that day that Musk never complained to him and never asked Trump for a thing.

"He's built a great company and he shouldn't be penalised," Trump said in March. "He's a patriot. I don't even know if he's a Republican."

A lot has changed since then.

Image source, Reuters

In a flurry of furious posts of social media, Elon Musk has suggested that without him, Donald Trump would not have won the US election last year.

Musk donated about $290 million to Donald Trump's campaign and other Republican candidates in 2024.

In that election, Republicans won the trifecta: the White House, the US House of Representatives and the US Senate.

Earlier today, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he would have won without the financial cushion from the world's richest man.

"I think I would have won, Susie [Wiles] would say I would have won Pennsylvania easily anyway," Trump said referring to his campaign manager and now chief of staff.

Musk's money paid for thousands of volunteers in key swing states that delivered Trump the presidency. In the electorally significant Pennsylvania, Musk held a lottery during which he gave people $1m (£740,000) a day for signing onto Republican causes. He also appeared alongside Trump at several rallies.

"Without me, Trump would have lost the election, [Democrats] would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate," he says on X. "Such ingratitude."

Brandon Drenon
US Reporter

House Republicans narrowly passed a sweeping tax and spending bill and delivered a major victory to President Donald Trump last month.

The bill, which Trump and other Republicans often refer to as the "big beautiful bill", includes extended tax cuts, added requirements for federal benefits eligibility, and an increase to the national debt ceiling - all major sticking points that were agreed upon by a 215-214 vote in the House in May.

The more than 1,000-page bill now heads to the Senate, which will have the chance to approve or change provisions of the bill before it reaches Trump's desk.

That's where it's hit some sticking points.

Republicans in the Senate want to make changes to the bill and on top of that Musk is not happy.

He wants to reduce the deficit, but the legislation as it currently stands in the House and as it's being discussed in the Senate would do the opposite.

Mike Wendling
US Reporter

Image source, Reuters

US President Donald Trump says he was "very surprised" and "disappointed" with former ally Elon Musk's criticisms of his centrepiece budget bill - we'll bring you more on this in a moment.

"Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will anymore," Trump told reporters in the White House on Thursday.

Now, Musk has aggressively pushed back.

In response, Musk doubled down on X and accused the president of "Such ingratitude", adding: "Without me, Trump would have lost the election".

Musk left his post at the Department of Government Efficiency last week after 129 days on the job, and Trump presented him with a with a golden key during a congratulatory news conference on 30 May.

But in the days since, he has repeatedly criticised Trump's budget bill currently working its way through Congress, calling it a "disgusting abomination" and posting "Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong."

A billionaire and a president get into a public feudpublished at 18:35 British Summer Time 5 June

18:35 BST 5 June

Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent

What happens when the richest person and the most powerful politician have a knock-down fight?

The world may be about to find out.

A disagreement between Elon Musk and Donald Trump started at a simmer last week, began bubbling yesterday and is now in full-on boil. And like everything these two men do, it is all spilling out into public view.

In remarks at the Oval Office this afternoon, Trump sounded a bit like a spurned lover. He expressed surprise at Musk’s criticism of his “big, beautiful” tax and spending legislation. He pushed back against the notion that he would have lost last year’s presidential election without Musk’s hundreds of millions of dollars in support. And he said Musk was only changing his tune now because his car company, Tesla, will be hurt by the Republican push to end electric vehicle tax credits.

Musk took to his social media site, X, with a very Generation X response for his 220 million followers: “Whatever". He said he didn’t care about the car subsidies, he wanted to shrink the budget deficit. He called Trump “ungrateful” for his help last year and that Democrats would have prevailed without him.

These two men have two of the world’s biggest megaphones, and they clearly enjoy using them. Until they abandon this fight, the din is likely to drown out everything else in American politics.

Image source, Reuters

The world's richest man and the US president once boasted a close relationship

But it seems, after Trump expressed his disappointment in his recently-departed special advisor, that special relationship is over.

Musk's hat once read: "Trump was right about everything". Now, Trump says: "Elon and I had a great relationship, I don't know if we will anymore".

We'll be covering the fall-out here with analysis from our correspondents, so stay with us.