Do We Really Need a New Political Party? An Investigation of Mr. Musk’s Immigration Status and Drug Use after the Trump-Trump Blastup

The blowup between President Trump and Musk caused a serious breakdown in their alliance. If their feud drags on or escalates, there will be far-reaching consequences.

Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were both voted for by Musk. He was critical of Trump in his first term and resigned from two advisory councils after the Trump administration pulled out of the Paris climate accord.

Use social media as an irritant. Mr. Musk posed a question on Thursday asking if it was time to create a new political party in America that represented the 80% in the middle. More than 80 percent of the nearly two million respondents so far have voted “yes.” And responding to a post suggesting that “Trump should be impeached,” Mr. Musk said: “Yes.” He wasn’t sure if he was agreeing with impeachment or another part of the post.

Trump thinks Musk is upset because the bill would affect him and his company and he pulled his nominee for NASA on Saturday. That pick, Jared Isaacman, had been recommended by Musk, and the nomination had cleared committee and was awaiting Senate confirmation. Isaacman is a friend of Musk, and his online payment company, Shift 4, has financial ties to SpaceX. On Thursday, Trump suggested he didn’t think the relationship “was appropriate.”

Mr. Musk has contracts with his companies. On his own social media platform, Truth Social, Mr. Trump suggested that ending the government contracts with Mr. Musk’s various companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, would be “the easiest way to save money in our Budget.” Last year, Mr. Musk’s companies were promised $3 billion in nearly 100 contracts with 17 government agencies.

Investigate Mr. Musk’s immigration status and drug use. Mr. Bannon called on Thursday for a “formal investigation of his immigration status, because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately.” Mr. Musk is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in South Africa. Mr. Bannon also called for an investigation into Mr. Musk’s drug use and his efforts to be briefed on classified information about military plans involving China.

He noted that Musk had only had positive things to say upon leaving the Oval Office last week. “You saw a man who was very happy when he stood behind the Oval desk. I told you to have a little makeup on, even with the black eye. He said “No, I don’t think so” when he was asked if they would get him to make up. It’s interesting and nice. He wants to be who he is,” Trump said.

July 2024Musk endorsed Trump after the assassination attempt in Butler, Penn. In the moments after the shooting, Musk wrote “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.”

August 2024Musk hosted an interview with Trump on X. After lengthy technical delays, the conversation largely followed the contours of Trump’s campaign speeches, and the two men both praised and talked past one another.

Musk was on the campaign trail with Trump. Wearing a custom black “Make America Great Again” hat, the billionaire addressed a rally in Butler, Penn., where he hopped around on stage, described himself as “dark MAGA,” and predicted “this will be the last election” if Trump were not to win.

At one of Trump’s rallies, Musk gave away $1 million to voters in swing states, as well as taking the stage.

The election was held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Florida. He shared a picture of himself saluting the American flag the following day, with the caption “It is morning in America again”.

Trump, Musk, and the Big Beautiful Bill: Relating a Republican Super-Billion to a Majority of US Policy Priorities

Late 2024Trump announced Musk and former Republican presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy would co-lead a “Department of Government Efficiency” focused on curbing federal spending. The entity was not known at that time whether it would be inside or outside the government.

Trump and Musk appeared in the Oval Office along with Musk’s young son to defend the work of DOGE.

“The people voted for major government reform, and that’s what people are going to get,” Musk told reporters. They’re going to get what they voted for.

They also addressed concerns that Musk’s many companies, which have business with and are regulated by some of the agencies DOGE has targeted, created conflicts of interest.

Musk was publicly reining in by Trump a week later. On March 6 he told Cabinet members that they are in charge of job cuts at their agencies, not Musk.

Asked by a journalist about reports that some agency heads were unhappy with Musk’s slash-and-burn approach, Trump asked, “Is anybody unhappy?” His question was met with laughter.

March 2025Trump and Musk took the unprecedented step of turning the White House lawn into a temporary Tesla showroom. Trump sat inside a red Model S with Musk and announced his intention to buy a Tesla, in a show of support amid a global backlash against Tesla over Musk’s controversial involvement in politics in both the U.S. and Europe, where he has thrown his support behind far-right parties.

Days later, Musk began railing against the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” saying it would drive up the federal budget deficit and undo the cost-cutting work of DOGE.

On his Truth Social site, Trump stated that he took away Elon’s EV Mandate that forced people to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted, and he went crazy.

On Thursday, their disagreements over the Republican mega-bill advancing most of Trump’s biggest domestic policy priorities erupted into personal attacks, with the two men using their respective social media platforms to hurl insults.

He said Musk was good at knowing the inner workings of the bill and did not have a problem until after he left. Musk said that the bill was never shown to him.

“In the history of civilization there has never been legislation that was both big and beautiful,” Musk said. “Everyone knows this! Either you get a big bill or a slim bill. Slim and beautiful are the way to go.

Trump, Musk, and the Internet: The Status of SpaceX, the Pentagon, and Electric Vehicles in the U.S. after the 2016 Black Hole Analogy

“They leave, and they wake up in the morning, and the glamor is gone. The whole world is different, and they become hostile, I don’t know what it is,” Trump said.

After Trump spoke, Musk posted on X that “without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”

The government probably won’t stop contracts with SpaceX soon, even though the political partnership appears to be at an end, according to a senior fellow at the Stimson Center.

“It will be some time before any of the company’s competitors will be able to take up the slack, so it looks like the president and the tech mogul will have to find a way to get along,” he said.

It’s unclear if Musk was trolling or being serious, but he responded to Trump’s threats by saying SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft, which has been used for years to ferry crews and cargo to the space station.

Losing crew members in the federal government would make it difficult for the Trump administration to land astronauts on the moon.

SpaceX is also building hundreds of spy satellites for the Pentagon, Reuters reported in March, work that, if abandoned, could have national security implications and prompt a backlash from the intelligence community.

The federal government launched a multi billion dollar effort to expand internet access to parts of the country that are not served by the internet.

Ukraine has also relied heavily on Starlink services since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country in 2022, leading top Pentagon officials to coordinate directly with Musk, The New Yorker has reported.

“Tesla is hugely reliant on federal largesse for the build-out of EV charging infrastructure, not to mention federal regulatory approval for his continued autonomous driving and robotics experiments,” Sonnenfeld said.

The version of the bill passed by the House would chop consumer tax credits for buying electric vehicles and slash federal funding for charging stations.

“Musk hasn’t done Tesla any favors by taking extremely unpopular actions in his time at DOGE, and globally the business is struggling from other decisions, like focusing on the Cybertruck instead of releasing more new practical models that consumers actually want,” he said. “In the European Union, sales are down heavily from the political damage, and sales in China are down from intense competition of very competitive Chinese EVs.”

The end of federal programs aimed at growing the EV sector would not damage Tesla as severely as other problems the automaker is confronting, said John Helveston, a professor at George Washington University who studies the electric vehicle industry.

He said that most of Musk’s fortune was tied to his stake in the electric car company. “The reality is that Musk’s position is far weaker than many realize.”

Both were performative gestures that crystalized the billionaire’s cozy relationship with the president, who was willing to shill for Musk after he dished out more than a quarter-billion dollars to support Trump’s run for president.