Trump's Brilliant Strategy For Proving He's Unbothered By Musk: Talking To Every News Outlet

In a surprise to basically no one, we've come to the end of the bromance between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and it's getting nasty. You can't have two men with fragile egos that big and with that much power and not have the relationship inevitably end in flames. And as the ship is going down, Trump is attempting to hold onto his dignity and pretend that he's not all that bothered by Musk going after him on social media and that he's really the one in control. He's the one refusing to talk to Musk, while Musk apparently wants to talk to him on the phone. And while Trump has responded with a few of his own posts on Truth Social, the social media company that Trump owns, he has pivoted to speaking to bad-mouthing Musk on TV.

Trump spoke with Dana Bash at CNN, and in a TikTok about the call, Bash said she asked him about the feud with Musk and, essentially, if the two would ever be back to being besties. Trump didn't seem to think so, and Bash said that Trump's exact description of Musk was: "He's got a problem. The poor guy's got a problem." It wasn't clear exactly what Trump thought that problem was.

Then, when he spoke to ABC News, Trump referred to Musk as "the man who has lost his mind." He repeated a similar claim on Fox News, saying ,"Elon's totally lost it."

It seems as though Donald Trump is working to try and control the narrative over the Elon Musk fiasco, perhaps thinking he'll reach more people if he goes to traditional news outlets instead of staying with social media, especially since there a lot more daily active users on X compared to Truth Social. As the relationship between them has rapidly devolved, Musk has been posting a lot on X, including the claim that Trump is named in the Jeffrey Epstein files, and that without Musk's help, Trump and the Republicans would have lost in the 2024 election (Note: No definitive evidence was included to support any of these claims). It's quite the switch from just a week before when Trump marked the end of Musk's time as a special government employee with an Oval Office press conference send off. Things had seemed good enough between the two of them at the time. But perhaps Musk has permanently joined the ranks of former Trump supporters who now can't stand him.

The split between the two men is over Trump's "big, beautiful bill," which has passed the House and is currently in the Senate. Musk has taken to referring to it on X as "the big, ugly spending bill." His main issue seems to be that the bill will cause an irresponsible and unsustainable level of increased U.S. debt.

Trump is currently taking the perspective that the issues between them are because Trump is working to eliminate the electric vehicle mandate that Joe Biden put in place. The "big, beautiful bill" would remove the electric vehicle tax credit for consumers, and Musk is the CEO of the electric car company Tesla.