Trump feared a fight with Musk could undermine his signature bill. Then their feud erupted

The staggering and exceedingly public rupture in the world’s most consequential and unprecedented partnership was a long time coming. But the surreal state of suspended animation that consumed Washington as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk traded escalating blows on social media obscured a 48-hour period that illustrated profoundly high-stakes moment for the White House.

The staggering and exceedingly public rupture in the world’s most consequential and unprecedented partnership was a long time coming. But the surreal state of suspended animation that consumed Washington as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk traded escalating blows on social media obscured a 48-hour period that illustrated a profoundly high-stakes moment for the White House. Trump’s entire economic agenda is sitting on a knife’s edge. Its most critical components are running up against deadlines and locked in a series of complex negotiations with limited margin for error. In two days, Musk managed to undercut, attack or inflame just about all of it. “He’s kind of been a ticking time bomb for a while now,” one person familiar with Musk’s unique and unprecedented role in the White House told CNN. “But this is, and has always been, so much bigger than him and explains why we ended here after the last few days.” Musk was never a key player on Trump’s economic team and wasn’t involved in drafting the agenda or at the table for the implementation efforts that launched when Trump entered office. Musk had scrapped with Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade adviser, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and had worn out his welcome in the power centers of the administration, multiple senior officials told CNN. But the billionaire’s rolling and increasingly scorched-earth attacks on Trump’s sweeping tax and spending package this week posed an acute threat to the cornerstone of Trump’s legislative agenda.