The bromance between Trump and Elon Musk is far from over, but as I suggested the other day in a piece I wrote about Elon pulling back from politics, it’s clear that Musk is disappointed with how government works.
Elon Musk: “Disappointed” Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” Undermines Work Of DOGE https://t.co/GOUcAz225l
— RCP Video (@rcpvideo) May 28, 2025
Musk has spent much of the last year either campaigning to get Trump elected or working to slash the size and scope of government spending, only to see the pile of results DOGE has accumulated go up in smoke.
Musk has a lot to be unhappy about. His foray into politics was motivated by a sincere belief that the West faces an existential threat: the headlong rush into insolvency.
Musk, as you know, thinks big. He started Tesla because he wanted to play an outsized role in the transition away from fossil fuels. His goal with SpaceX is to make human beings an interplanetary species, reducing the risk of extinction, and his pronatalism is grounded by his belief that the human population is set to crater.
He bought Twitter because he believed freedom of speech and thought were dying, and has contributed money both here and in Europe to promote freedom and free markets.
The effort undertaken by @DOGE and @elonmusk is one of the most important of my lifetime and I am committed to not letting the bureaucracy slow it down.
We need to get the costs under control; we need to get government efficiency under control; and we need to make the government… pic.twitter.com/z2bWCMg9bu
— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) May 23, 2025
He put it all on the line, and the return on his investments has been disappointing.
🚨 BREAKING: Trump responds to @ElonMusk criticizing the Big Beautiful Bill for not enough spending cuts.
“We WILL be negotiating that bill. I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it.”
“The biggest thing is the level of tax cutting we… pic.twitter.com/l2qXgJhaD8
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 28, 2025
Trump responds to @ElonMusk criticizing the Big Beautiful Bill for not enough spending cuts.
“We WILL be negotiating that bill. I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it.”
“The biggest thing is the level of tax cutting we will be doing.”
“We’re gonna see what happens. The Senate is negotiating with us.”
“Speaker Johnson and Thune have done an incredible job.”
“Remember – we have 0 Democrat votes…they’re only doing it for hatred…that means we have to get almost all Republican votes, and I think we’re very close to doing that.”
Neither Trump nor Musk is wrong. Trump is being practical about the political constraints–in a closely divided Congress, especially one where a number of Republicans are kinda/sorta Democrat-lite–making specific cuts to the budget is a Herculean task. When you can’t get every Republican to enthusiastically endorse repealing parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, imagining that you can cut discretionary spending with any serious constituency is based on wild optimism.
I don’t care that this has been shared like crazy, it needs to be shared even more
Elon Musk says he “does not see a reason to do political spending”
The GOP Congress won’t pass what we voted for them to pass. This is absolutely INSANE. What’s even the point of Congress then??? pic.twitter.com/CSwwg8QnsU
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 21, 2025
Musk, though, is right that the United States is rushing headlong into insolvency. It is impossible to predict when that will happen–there is a Wiley E. Coyote quality to such things, where the unsustainable goes on much longer than you expect–but you can’t rack up this much debt and keep adding trillions of dollars a year to it without markets looking for places other than US debt as a safe haven.
How do you go bankrupt? Slowly, then all at once.
I have come to the perhaps obvious conclusion that accelerating GDP growth is essential.@DOGE has and will do great work to postpone the day of bankruptcy of America, but the profligacy of government means that only radical improvements in productivity can save our country. https://t.co/UduLpr8jhA
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 23, 2025
Elon seems to have concluded that the best contribution he can make isn’t in the realm of politics, but spurring economic growth. There are two ways, in theory, to address the debt problem: reduce spending to cut or eliminate the deficit, or greatly expand the economy so that the debt/GDP ratio returns to a manageable level.
The first seems pretty hard, given recent experience. The second? Well, Trump’s tax cuts are aimed at helping there, but only rapid innovation will make a huge difference.
