US President Donald Trump has warned Elon Musk that the tech billionaire would face “serious consequences” if he funds Democratic candidates running against Republicans who have backed Trump’s signature tax bill.
The legislation has been at the heart of the pair’s very public break up, after Musk took to his social media platform X on Thursday to slam what Trump has touted as his “big, beautiful” tax bill.
Musk, who was one of Trump’s top donors in the 2024 presidential election, has called the bill “an abomination.”
It has been suggested that the South Africa-born billionaire might look to punish Republicans who voted for the spending bill by backing their Democratic opponents in primary elections in November.
In an interview with US broadcaster NBC News, Trump said Musk would “have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,” without specifying what they would look like.
The US president also said he had “no” desire to mend his relationship with Musk, who he called “disrespectful,” and that he has “no intention of speaking to him.”
Musk and Trump had been close allies, with the SpaceX and Tesla CEO serving as a special advisor overseeing Trump’s cost-cutting initiatives at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) until he left the role on May 30.
Within days, the pair became embroiled in a bitter argument that has played out on social media.
As the argument escalated, Musk alleged on X — in posts that have since been deleted — that Trump was implicated in the unreleased government files on disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who hanged himself in his prison cell in 2019 awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
“Time to drop the really big bomb: (Trump) is in the Epstein files,” Musk said in the now-deleted posts, without providing evidence backing his claim. “That is the real reason they have not been made public.”
Trump spoke to NBC on Saturday after Musk deleted those posts. In the interview, the president dismissed the claims as “old news” and said “even Epstein’s lawyer said I had nothing to do with” the late financiers’ alleged crimes.
