How Donald Trump Became Elon Musk's 'X'

US President Donald Trump's ‘Big Beautiful Bill' has triggered one of the biggest fallouts of all time. Until about last week, even though the Tesla CEO officially left the Trump administration, he was to remain one of the president's most influential outside advisers. However, this has now changed.

Musk's and Trump's insults at each other on social media on June 5th peaked as Trump threatened to cut government contracts for Musk and the latter claimed that the Trump administration had not released the records related to Jeffrey Epstein because Trump is mentioned in them.

Here's a timeline of how the pair's relationship blossomed and withered:

July 2024

After Trump's assassination attempt in Butler, Penn, Musk endorsed Trump and wrote on X, "I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery” minutes after the shooting. Days later, he announced that he will interview Trump live on X Spaces.

Although Musk had previously said that he would not donate to either presidential candidate, later on in the month he revealed that he was funding a super PAC "to promote the principles that made America great in the first place."

August 2024

Musk then hosted an interview with Trump on X. Here, Musk pitched the idea of a "government efficiency commission," which he said he would join. 

October 2024

This was the first time Musk hit the campaign trail with Trump wearing his “Dark MAGA” attire and said, "As you can see, I'm not just MAGA — I'm dark MAGA." 

At another Trump rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, he organised a series of $1 million giveaways to voters in swing states.

November 2024

Musk spent the election night at Trump's residence Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The morning after he posted an AI-generated image of himself saluting the American flag and captioned it as "It is morning in America again." He found a special mention in Trump's victory speech where the latter said: "A star is born — Elon!"

Later that month, Trump announced that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would lead a new "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), a newly created department that would focus on government spending and would operate as an independent advisory group. However, Ramaswamy left the project before Trump took office.

January 2025

Musk attended Trump's inauguration where his salute caused outrage as it resembled a salute associated with the Nazis.

February 2025

Trump and Musk were seen together in the Oval Office, with Musk's son X taking the centre stage, to defend DOGE's aggressive cost-cutting measures. "The people voted for major government reform, and that's what people are going to get," Musk told reporters. "They're going to get what they voted for."

Later on in the month, Musk joined Trump's Cabinet meeting, where Trump said that the billionaire was “sacrificing a lot” because of his government work.

May 2025

Musk announced that he was leaving DOGE, and said that his “scheduled time” as a special government employee was over. At an Oval Office press conference, Trump praised Musk as "one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced."

The billionaire thanked Trump “for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending." Trump said that Musk is “really not leaving" and was "going to be back and forth."

However, days later, Musk was back, but only to go against the "Big Beautiful Bill”, and said that it would undo all the work DOGE did and would drive up the federal budget deficit.

June 2025

Musk had completely unravelled once out of the White House and slammed the bill as a "disgusting abomination," in a post on X. "Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it."

Subsequently, he posted on X stating, "In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people."

June 5, 2025

By now, the bromance had tumbled into a full blown spat between Musk and Trump. 

Trump posted on Truth Social, "Elon was 'wearing thin,' I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!"

Musk launched a counter attack on the president, reminding him that, "Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate”.