Donald Trump and Elon Musk, friends turned foes, now blowing hot and cold

It is a fascinating battle the world is witnessing on social media. The richest man on earth and the most powerful man on earth have been trading insults on social media platforms owned by each of them, respectively.

While US president Donald Trump has been shooting barbs at Musk on Truth Social, a platform that he owns, Musk is retaliating in kind on X, formerly Twitter, that he owns.

The feud has followers all over the world — and the feud is now so bitter that the US president has darkly hinted that he may have to think of deporting Musk, a ‘friend’ as recently as May, right out of the United States!

Deporting Elon Musk may not, however, be easy — even for POTUS Donald Trump.

While the unpredictable US president is pushing the limits of his authority and has successfully taken steps that few presidents before him have considered, far less attempted, Musk is clearly no pushover.

Elon Musk, born in South Africa, has been a US citizen since 2002, claimed a biography in 2023. Musk apparently holds South African, Canadian and also US citizenship. His mother is Canadian and Musk moved to Canada at the age of 17, before starting at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, where he secured degrees in economics and physics.

Which is why, many were a little startled when the latest volley they anticipated turned into an almost damp squib, with Musk’s “credit where credit is due” tweet, patting Trump’s back for his recent, er, diplomatic triumphs.

The escalating, off-and-on feud since May 2025 — when Musk stepped down as head of the DOGE (department of government Efficiency) and resigned his ‘special federal employee’ status — has engaged international attention... and embarrassed some countries, like India.

The Indian prime minister had famously courted Musk during his visit to Washington DC in February 2025. While PM Modi lined up senior aides such as NSA Ajit Doval, foreign minister S. Jaishankar and foreign secretary Vikram Misri, among others, Musk turned up with some of his children — he is said to have 12 children with 3 different partners — and their nanny. While the aides watched the duo having a convivial conversation and the children played with the PM, photographers captured the cringeworthy moments for posterity.

India then went out of its way to clear the ground for Musk’s Starlink and Tesla to enter India, even before the trade deal with the US was sealed.

New Delhi clearly did not expect Musk to fall out with Trump so soon. Indian officials are now nervously waiting for the dust to settle, unable to decide whether to continue rolling out the red carpet for Musk after he appears to have rubbed the US president the wrong way, or to jump the other way.

Trump suggested in a social media post on Tuesday, 1 July 2025, that if Musk lost his government contracts, he “would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa”.

“We might have to put DOGE on Elon,” Trump said about the federal cost-cutting effort. “DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible?”

Asked by a reporter later if he would deport Musk, Trump paused and said, “I don’t know. We’ll have to take a look.”

In response, Musk wrote on X: “So tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting. But I will refrain for now.”

Trump was irked by Musk’s criticism of the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’, which was passed by the Senate with a casting vote by vice-president J.D. Vance to break the tie.

Musk had also threatened to launch a new ‘American Party’ and ensure the defeat of the Congressmen who support the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’.

The tax and spending legislation includes an end to consumer credit for purchase of electric vehicles — manufactured by, among others, Musk’s company Tesla.

Trump has attributed Musk’s opposition to the bill to elimination of subsidies that his many business ventures benefit from. Pointing out that Musk was “losing his EV mandate”, the US president added, “Elon could lose a lot more than that.” While the Bill passed by the Senate does not affect Tesla directly, the tax-and-spending measure would end tax credit for individual electric vehicle purchases that helped boost EV sales.

Musk has denied, however, that his opposition to the Bill is based on preserving government subsidies for his companies.

The feud has been accelerating since June 2025, when Musk posted that he was accelerating the decommissioning of his Dragon spacecraft, which the US relies on to carry American astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.

Hours later, he appeared to back down from that threat, saying in response to a post on X urging him to cool off: “Good advice. Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon.”

He had earlier said he was dropping the “really big bomb” – suggesting without evidence that Trump appears in unreleased the Epstein files, related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

A reconciliation looks unlikely — even as it is becoming clear that both sides will be feeling the pain.