DOGE eats Musk? Billionaire entrepreneur's companies at risk as he
reignites feud with Trump
[July 02, 2025] By
MICHELLE L. PRICE, BERNARD CONDON and MICHELLE CHAPMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — Elon Musk may find out what happens when DOGE bites
man.
The billionaire SpaceX, Tesla and X owner who catapulted his zealous
embrace of President Donald Trump into a powerful position, slashing
government spending, now risks sweeping cuts to his own bottom line
after resuming the feud that led to their very public bitter split last
month.
Musk's renewed heckling of Trump's big tax breaks and spending cuts
bill, which passed the Senate on Tuesday, threatens to put billions of
dollars of his government contracts in jeopardy if Trump retaliates. The
rupture of their tenuous peace has resulted in a wobbling of the stock
price of a market-moving company and led the president to muse about
deporting Musk to his native South Africa.
In a Frankenstein-style twist, as Musk volleyed fresh critiques about
the cost of Trump’s signature legislation, Trump mused Tuesday about
turning Musk's Department of Government Efficiency back on its creator.
“DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon,” Trump
told reporters as he left the White House for a tour of a new
immigration detention center in Florida.
Trump also suggested in an early morning social media post that if Musk
lost his government contracts, he “would probably have to close up shop
and head back home to South Africa.”
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.” Tesla and SpaceX did not respond
to messages seeking comment about their CEO.
The big bill divide
Musk has called Trump’s big bill a financial boondoggle for America that
would kill jobs and bog down burgeoning industries. He’s not limiting
himself to harsh assessments on social media. On Monday, he threatened
to reinsert himself into politics and try to oust every member of
Congress who votes for the bill.
“They will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on
this Earth,” Musk said in one post.
In other posts, he branded Republicans “the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” and
threatened to create a new political party.
Trump has said Musk is actually irritated by the legislation’s dramatic
rollback of the Biden-era green energy tax breaks for electric vehicles
and related technologies. Musk has denied this, but the rollback could
hurt Tesla's finances.
“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and
without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head
back home to South Africa,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social
media network.
Musk became a U.S. citizen in 2002, according to a biography of him by
Walter Isaacson. It’s unclear if Trump would take the extraordinary step
of having the government explore the rare process of removing his
citizenship, known as denaturalization.
Feud has high stakes for Musk
Musk’s rocket and satellite company, SpaceX, is also in Trump’s
crosshairs.
“No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and
our Country would save a FORTUNE,” Trump said in his post. “BIG MONEY TO
BE SAVED!!!”
[to top of second column] |
President Donald Trump speaks to the media before walking across the
South Lawn of the White House to board Marine One en route to Joint
Base Andrews, Md., and on to Florida, Tuesday, July 1, 2025, in
Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
 SpaceX has received billions of
federal dollars to help send astronauts into space and perform other
work for NASA, including a contract to send a team from the space
agency to the moon next year.
But the most immediate fallout of their feud was the tumbling stock
in Tesla, down 5.3% on Tuesday.
Tesla stock’s performance can have an outsize impact on the stock
market index funds in which millions of Americans’ 401(k)s have
invested their retirement savings. The electric vehicle maker is one
of the Magnificent Seven, the group of companies that includes Apple
and Google parent Alphabet and that account for about a third of the
value of the S&P 500.
Musk’s social media outbursts come at a delicate time for his car
company. Tesla is just a week into its test run of its self-driving
“robotaxi” service in Austin, Texas. Musk needs that test to succeed
if he hopes to make good on his promise to investors that he will be
able to quickly offer the service in other cities over the next few
months.
One possible hurdle to that: federal safety regulators.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requested
information from Tesla last week after videos began circulating on
social media of a few of its autonomous cabs in Austin driving
erratically, including one heading down an opposing lane.
That followed a NHTSA request for data last month on how the
driverless taxis will perform in low-visibility conditions, which
itself followed an investigation last year into 2.4 million Teslas
equipped with full self-driving software after several accidents,
including one that killed a pedestrian.
Musk needs robotaxis to take off because Tesla's main business of
selling cars is going poorly.
New fallout from the spat
Musk has acknowledged that boycotts by people angry with his
political views have hurt sales, but he has largely blamed a less
frightening, temporary factor: People are so excited about Tesla's
forthcoming latest version of their Model Y SUV that they decided to
hold off on purchases for a few months.
But now that the new version is available, and sales are still
tanking. Figures out last week showed sales in Europe plunged 28% in
May over the prior year, the fifth month in a row of big drops. A
new batch of sales data, including the U.S. and other parts of the
world, is coming out on Wednesday.
The irony is that Musk's social media spat with Trump threatens his
businesses from both sides. People won’t buy his cars because of the
memories of his friendship with Trump, and now that and his other
businesses could get hurt because that friendship has soured.
“In a bizzarro world, he’s alienated both sides,” said Dan Ives, a
Wedbush Securities financial analyst. “It seems impossible, but he’s
actually done it.”
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Condon and Chapman reported from New York.
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