With the trade war ignited, Musk truly had grievances he couldn’t express. How could he dare to directly criticize Trump? He could only vent his anger on Navarro, the behind-the-scenes architect of the trade war. On Twitter, Musk bluntly criticized Navarro as being dumber than a sack of bricks for making such an unreliable decision. But this criticism was like poking a hornet's nest. Just a couple of days later, Trump responded: 'I don’t need Musk to do anything; I just happen to like him.' Trump was probably thinking: You call my strategist stupid, but all my policies are based on his advice. Aren’t you just indirectly criticizing me?
The trade war is still raging, and Musk has gotten into a spat with Besant again. Musk directly recommended Sharpley to Trump as the acting head of the IRS, which infuriated Besant. The IRS is an agency under the Treasury Department, and by bypassing him to recommend a candidate directly to Trump, isn’t that a slap in the face? Thus, the two engaged in a fierce 'war of words' in the White House conference room. As a result, just a few hours later, Trump issued an appointment notice, assigning Falkend, recommended by Besant, to manage the IRS. Clearly, Trump has abandoned Musk once again this time.
In the more than three months since Trump took office, Musk seemed to ride a roller coaster, falling from cloud nine to rock bottom, becoming the world’s biggest loser. He supported Trump not because of any tabloid news about a child changing gender. Musk has many children, and he wouldn’t gamble his fortune over such a trivial matter. The fundamental reason is still about interests.
During Biden’s administration, new energy subsidies were not given to Musk, while Boeing received significantly more aerospace technology subsidies than Musk did. Musk felt that he was making too little money following Biden, so he switched allegiance to Trump. The two likely reached a number of agreements, such as Trump's focus on developing a space defense system, which could bring significant benefits to Musk's projects.
After Trump was elected, Musk entered a high-profile moment, being more active than Trump himself, daring to be the first to voice his opinion on everything. On December 18 of last year, Congress released a 1,547-page appropriations bill, and Musk immediately went crazy, posting frantically, cursing it, and tweeting hundreds of times a day, ridiculing and mocking it, saying that this massive pile of documents was akin to a huge chunk of pork. The entire Congress was left speechless by his tirade, and Speaker Johnson could only swallow his anger, revising the bill twice until Musk was satisfied. At that time, Musk was in his prime, standing at the peak of the world, with the entire U.S. needing to heed his wishes.
From that time until February of this year, Musk dominated the global news headlines, actively commenting on everything and tirelessly tweeting every day. But who could have imagined that he would suddenly fall silent and announce that he was leaving.
There were two events that marked a sudden turning point for Musk. One was his high-profile announcement to audit the Pentagon to clarify the expenditure of military funds; the other was his announcement to investigate the U.S. National Treasury to see if there was any gold inside. At that time, Musk had just completed an investigation of the International Development Agency, full of confidence and high spirits, and everyone thought there would be a big show to follow. But unexpectedly, after announcing these two things, he fell silent and never spoke out again, and both matters were left unresolved.
Actually, there was another incident in between. According to the Washington Post, Musk went to the Pentagon to guide work and even planned to hear the U.S. operational briefing. When Trump found out, he was furious and cursed: 'What the hell is Musk doing there? You need to make sure he doesn’t attend the meeting!' It’s clear that Trump was very unhappy about it. After that, Musk never went back to the Pentagon.
Since then, Trump has grown increasingly displeased with Musk. He announced plans to cut NASA’s scientific budget by half for the fiscal year 2026, a level of cut unprecedented in the U.S. space sector. It’s worth noting that NASA is the biggest customer of Musk's SpaceX, and a large number of research and launch programs rely on NASA's funding. Now that NASA's budget has been cut in half, how can Musk have it easy?
Musk helped Trump cut costs, but unexpectedly, Trump cut his own expenses instead. At that time, Musk didn’t dare to say much and could only helplessly mumble a few lines on social media: 'This is very worrying. I fully support scientific research, but I am merely the main contractor for NASA and cannot participate in budget discussions.'
One important reason Musk bet on Trump was his dissatisfaction with Biden’s budget, feeling that Biden allocated too much money to NASA for Boeing and not enough for his own space exploration company. But now it’s even worse than it was under Biden. To put it another way, if Biden or Harris had become president, Tesla's sales would not have plummeted like they have now, and his assets wouldn’t have shrunk by a third. Musk must be regretting it deeply, wondering: What have I done? What was the point of spending so much money to make Trump president?
So what exactly happened that led to Musk's complete failure? Was it because he wanted to investigate the Pentagon and the treasury, provoking a backlash from the deep state in the U.S.? Actually, no. The real reason was that Trump said it was now his turn to be the deep state. In this complex political and business game, Musk was like a pawn, manipulated at will by Trump, ultimately ending up in total defeat. This also shows us that in the interest-driven world of American politics and business, there are no eternal friends, only eternal interests.
