How Trump and Musk are intertwined despite falling out

Even if observers have long supposed that Donald Trump and Elon Musk would eventually fall, few predicted the speed and ferocity with which their social media quarrels broke out.

Since Musk promised his full support to the President following an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania less than a year ago, the political and commercial interests of the two men are increasingly linked.

In several key areas – including political funding, government contracts and their personal relations – the two men have come to rely on each other, which means that the end of the alliance is likely to be disorderly.

This complicates the fallout from their rift and guarantees that, wherever the line goes from here, they will continue to be linked – and will have the potential to injure each other in several ways.

During last year, Musk donations to Trump and other Republicans were enormous – totaling $ 290 million (214 million pounds Sterling) according to the Open secret campaign finance site.

Musk said Thursday that the president won the election because of him and complained about “ingratitude”.

There is an obvious counterexample. Earlier this year, Musk shoved $ 20 million in a key legal race in Wisconsin, however, his chosen republican candidate lost 10 percentage points in a state that Trump won last November.

However, Musk’s donations are a large part of the money that the Republicans will miss while they will try to hold their advantage of the congress in the mid-term elections in November 2026.

It may be a problem they were facing anyway. Musk previously declared that it would contribute a lot to “much less” to the campaigns in the future.

But could the factory with the White House cause a musk not only invites to withdraw but throw your money behind the opposition to Trump?

He hinted as such on Thursday when he published a survey on X with the question: “Is it time to create a new political party in America which really represents 80% in the middle?”

Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, its subsidiary Starlink and Tesla do a lot of business with the US government.

SpaceX alone was allocated $ 20.9 billion (16.3 billion pounds sterling) in US government contracts since 2008According to the analysis of BBC Verify.

Trump realizes that it gives him a lever effect on the richest man in the world.

He posted on Truth Social Thursday: “The simplest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate the subsidies and government contracts of Elon. I have always been surprised that Biden does not do it!”

Musk threatened to retaliate by distributing the SpaceX dragon, which ferries astronauts and supplies at the international space station. But he then fell back from this threat.

In practice, the cancellation or withdrawal of government contracts would be a complicated and long legal process, and for the moment and a certain time to come, the US government will probably continue to do a large amount of companies with Musk companies.

No other company other than SpaceX can make Dragon and Falcon 9 rockets, and NASA has embarked on a number of space and moon missions using SpaceX Craft.

Despite these commercial partnerships, Musk and its companies are also faced with surveys of several government agencies – more than 30 years, according to a February York Times – and regulatory issues such as the approval of taxis without driver offered by Tesla.

When Musk had the task of setting up the Ministry of Government (DOGE) of cost reduction (DOGE) as one of the main engines of change of Trump within the American federal government, he had a wide range to choose his own staff.

According to disclosed lists of DOGE employees, many of them worked before for Musk companies. And even if Musk left DOGE a week ago, many staff members remain in their employment of government.

Some DOGE employees also have deep links with the Trump camp. Katie Miller – Who worked in Trump’s first administration and is married to the current chief of staff of the White House, Stephen Miller – was the spokesperson for Doge.

However, CNN reported that Ms. Miller had also left the government last week and is now working “full -time” for Musk.

There are others in the Trump administration whose loyalty can be tested by the quarrel. David Sacks, whom Trump appointed his best advisor to artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, is close to Musk, having worked with the magnate ago at Paypal.

On X, many leaders of Silicon Valley as well as influencers of the Maga world chose sides and analyzing each of the messages of back and forth published by the richest president and man in the world.

Yougov of the survey company carried out an instant investigation Thursday Ask the people they would satisfy. The results indicated that 70% of Republican respondents said that Trump, against less than 1 in 10 who chose Musk.