Between Donald Trump and Elon Musk a spectacular American divorce – Liberation

Donald Trump will he go and stick a sticker « Purchased before it becomes zinzin » at the bumper of his Tesla, Still parked Thursday evening in front of the White House, while the two men had gone away from insults, algarades and threats for hours? The richest man in the world less than a week ago However, left his official office as a « special employee » of the government With great fanfare and on the pretext of eating the shareholders of its companies by devoting themselves more assiduously. Sporting a mysterious eye with black butter, He had then been given a golden key from the White House from the hands of a Trump anxious to ensure that this genius of which he was flattered until then of the company- her genius – would remain his « Friend and advisor », « not (left) » and would continue « To come and go » Between his business and the oval office.

Thursday, June 5, the relationship of the two men turned for good to the sour quarrel of Egos à Vif, according to a self -taught as sudden and flashant as its fire to fire a little less than a year ago, when Musk had thrown his fusional support and his billions behind the candidacy of a Trump then freshly brushed by death. A few months later, one won his Revanchard bet to take over the White House, while the other became, for a time undoubtedly gone over today, the most influentially elected individual that modern America has ever known.

The American president, however, appeared singularly Gai and Badin in front of the media on Thursday morning, at the time of receiving the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the White House, just after a « very good » And long phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping. That his ex-patronage and inseparable compander has been spreading for two days in hostile outings against there « Large and beautiful law » budgetary Picking up most of his promises of tax gifts and legislative ambitions did not seem to spoil the mood allege of the moment – even if Musk qualified the thing, the day before, d ‘« Disgusting abomination » And « Clientelist » Devoted to exploding the public deficit rather than absorbing it.

At most Trump says he then « surprised » And « disappointed » – but in unusually measured words – criticism of« Elon, which I always appreciated », And « With whom we had a great relationship – I don’t know if it will still be the case. » Then, before trying a vain diversion by calling for yet another time to investigate the supposed plot behind the cognitive decline of his predecessor Joe Biden: « I would prefer that he criticize me rather than the bill, which is incredibly good »

And the Head of State had not finished talking to the cameras, exposing the supposed reasons for musk’s acrimony against the text being debated in the Senate (according to him, the planned repellent of generous subsidies with renewable energies, and in particular to electric vehicles, voted under Biden), that the boss of Tesla hastened to follow the presidential invitation to redorient Towards Trump himself, by responding live via his X network (ex-Twitter): « Without me, Trump would have lost the election, the Democrats would control the room (representatives) and the Republicans would hold the Senate with two seats in advance (instead of six). What ingratitude. « 

This was only the first salvo of several hours of rabid escalation where Musk will exhume dozens of old Trump tweets supposed to attest to its ideological drift of the state. He will also call for the creation of a new party, will prophesy a « recession » imminent caused by The Trumpian trade war and ignite the conspiratorial minds by accusing the American president of having retained the disclosure of « Epstein files » On the grounds that he would appear there himself alongside the famous sexual predator. At the end of the afternoon (local time), the Wall Street scholarship had just dropped the curtain on a 14 % fall in the Tesla action (some $ 150 billion in evaporated valuation) when Elon Musk relaya on X his assent to a call to the dismissal of Trump and his replacement by vice-president JD Vance.

Meanwhile, the Trumpian response had taken the form of a succession of posts on the Truth Social platform. First falsely compassionate: « Elon was at the end, I asked him to leave, I took him (its grants to electric vehicles) And he went crazy! ”. Then more clearly threatening: “The simplest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to end the subsidies and government contracts in Elon. I have always been surprised that Biden did not do it! ”. To which the interested party will retort (before retracting a few hours later) that he was going to put his Dragon space shuttle immediately out of service, the only one currently able to transport astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on behalf of NASA.

While the high White House advisers canceled their TV passages at the last minute to take part in crisis meetings in the Oval Office, the former Trumpian-Strate Steve Bannon, a long-standing critic of Elon Musk, proclaimed that he would advise the president to break all the contracts binding his companies to NASA or Pentagon, of Pentagon, « Nationalizing SpaceX before midnight tonight » and to engage a « Formal investigation of its migratory status, because I have the deep conviction that it is in an irregular situation, and should be expelled from the country immediately ». Bannon finally suggested investigating Musk’s drug use – which would have according to the multiple sources of New York Times Crossed in the past few months surrounded by a thick psychedelic fog, constantly fuel at ketamine, ecstasy and hallucinogenic mushrooms – as well as his attempt to access a confidential pentagon briefing on China, while his affairs bind him very closely to the Beijing authorities.

A few hours before the oligarch unscrewed, to unleash his furious resentment against the one to which he declared his passion still in early February (« I like Donald Trump as much as a hetero man can love another man »), the media Axios Revee some of the springs of his resentment then still reserved for the budget bill. All things that say the badly experienced decline of an influence bought some $ 280 million injected into the presidential campaign of its champion last fall: the non-renewal of its mission at the end of the 130 days set by law for the post he occupied, the announced end of the tax credit benefiting to electric manufacturers like Tesla, and the sudden reversal head of NASA.

This exfiltration was expected sooner or later, with regard to an aura of Musk having fired largely toxic and the number of enemies gradually turned against him in the Trumpian orbit, to sometimes curl the grade, of the chief of diplomacy Marco Rubio to the Minister of Finance Scott Bessent. But despite all this, and the ultimately reduced scope – despite its devastating effects – of its chaotic business to rough up the public chainsaw expenditure via its « DOGE » (the alleged « Department of Government Effectiveness »), Elon Musk still enjoyed the White House of an unparalleled imprint on the cogs and means of the federal state. Already generously infused with subsidies and contracts in the past two decades (for a total of some $ 38 billion according to an estimate of the Washington Post), its companies, SpaceX in mind, enjoyed privileged access to public procurement.

He also retained a network of faithful permanently installed in neuralgic positions of around thirty ministries and agencies of the executive after obtaining that the main federal regulators of its activities were sidelined, while the official diplomacy of the United States ensured the aggressive promotion of its Internet service by Satellite Starlink to foreign governments to open their markets Negotiation of treatments within the framework of the trade war delivered by Trump to the rest of the world.

He was not less a bitter assessment of his visit to Washington when he declared last week, a few days to disappear, that he had « Probably spent a little too much time in politics » to the detriment of his business, and heard « Spend much less, in the future, in politics » – as he thought « Have enough ». But this temptation of withdrawal seemed to have already experienced when the holder not only of the greatest fortune, but also of the most carrier megaphone in the world (his platform X and his all-powerful algorithm), claims his ambition on Tuesday « Feed all politicians who betrayed the American people in November next year », During the mid-term elections. Or when he meditated on Thursday, immediately the divorce consumed, on the longevity of his power of nuisance and influence on political destinies: « If it can nourish reflection » Republican elected officials who would hesitate to choose their camp, « He stays in Trump three and a half years as president, but I will be even more than forty years old. »