Musk Snaps Back to Reality?
What ended the honeymoon period?
Did Musk accidentally leave his ketamine stash at the White House? Less than a day after officially leaving, he decried Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, stating, “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.” It’s almost like he has come down from a several-month-long bender and, in his sobriety, gone, “Oh my god, what have I done?” But, truth be told, we all saw this coming, right? Trump and Musk are arguably the world’s biggest egotistical megalomaniacs, and they both display a seriously strong streak of kleptomania. Good bedfellows they do not make, and it was only a matter of time before one cannibalised the other. But why has Musk chosen this moment to make his move? Well, let’s try to unpack it.
Musk’s main criticism of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is that it won’t actually reduce the national deficit but instead massively increase it. Unsurprisingly, when you attempt to significantly cut taxes for some of the largest taxpayers, the books no longer add up.
However, this isn’t as significant a problem as you might think. Since Reagan, the Republicans haven’t been the party of fiscal conservatism. Instead, they have adopted the opposite approach, embracing Reaganomics. This is when the government gives significant tax cuts to the largest corporations, cuts public services, and spends enormous amounts of taxpayer money on privatised industry (also known as oligarchy). The idea was that the wealth created would “trickle down” and replace those cut public services, but that has never happened. Instead, under Reaganomics, the rich grew richer, the poor grew poorer, and the national deficit ballooned, burdening the US taxpayer even further. The fact that this system didn’t work wasn’t a problem for Reagan or the Republicans; their goal has arguably always been to make the rich richer, which they achieved. Naturally, getting the public to agree to this demonstrably false “trickle down” ideology is impossible, so instead, the Republicans proclaim to be fiscally conservative.
However, Musk is a die-hard Reaganomics fan and understands this bait-and-switch tactic, as evidenced by DOGE.
Musk headed DOGE under the guise of fiscal conservatism and deficit reduction but instead did the opposite. DOGE’s cuts actually cut major income streams for the government to the extent that the amount it will cost the government will almost certainly massively exceed the savings, pushing the deficit even higher (read more here). Furthermore, many of the cuts and changes Musk made concentrated power in the hands of corporations, primarily his own. DOGE would have been a wet dream for Reagan.
Musk’s actions are in direct opposition to his criticism of the Big Beautiful Bill. The exact same criticism can be and has been leveraged against DOGE. So what’s going on here? Is Musk a hypocrite?
Yes, he has always been. But I can see three big reasons why Musk may have chosen this moment to double-cross Trump.
1. It’s a Marketing Stunt
It’s no secret that Musk’s actions involving Trump and DOGE have damaged the reputations of Tesla, Starlink, and SpaceX. 56% of Americans have said they wouldn’t buy or lease a Tesla specifically because of Musk, and that percentage is significantly higher over the pond. So, no prizes for guessing why both Tesla and Starlink sales are way down globally.
Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is not just hated by the same progressive people who are boycotting Musk’s products but also by many conservatives who feverishly supported DOGE. By becoming a vocal critic of this bill, Musk can gain traction and approval on both sides of the aisle, potentially helping to ease the boycott, all while keeping his far-right agenda and connections alive.
It’s the best of both worlds, as long as neither group finds out that DOGE did the exact same thing as this bill. However, hiding the truth is something Musk is rather skilled at, so that might not be a significant issue.
2. Musk is Embarrassed
Sometimes, the most straightforward answer is correct. When you look at Musk, what do you see? I see a man riddled with childhood trauma and feelings of inadequacy, desperate to keep his paper tower standing. He has to be perceived as a misunderstood visionary savant in every room he enters despite his obvious intellectual shortcomings (which we all have); otherwise, his fragile ego collapses, and so too does the value of his companies. To cope with this, he has turned to drugs to soothe the pain and adopted an extreme ideology to form a cult separated from reality around him, creating a safe bubble for his delusions to thrive.
With this in mind, this backstabbing could be explained simply by Musk being embarrassed. DOGE was supposed to clear the way for Trump’s bill, tearing trillions of dollars out of the budget, giving space for Trump to significantly cut taxes for the rich and dish out funds to his oligarchs. But that hasn’t happened — quite the opposite. Even Trump was recently caught asking if DOGE was “bullshit”.
This is a failure that could penetrate and break the new political cult Musk has built for himself. This safe bubble he has created is under serious threat because he failed to deliver what he promised. But what if he shot the messenger? By villainising Trump and this bill, he can obfuscate his failure and maybe even strengthen this bubble.
When weirdo edge-lords like Musk do something dramatic, the reason why can almost always be attributed to ego. It really could be that simple.
3. The Bill will Kill Tesla
However, let’s try to give Musk a little more credit, as this bill could have a gigantic impact on Tesla. In fact, there is an argument that it outright could kill Tesla. Why? Because this bill rapidly phases out EV tax credits.
In 2024, carbon credits contributed $2.76 billion to Tesla’s total net income of $7.13 billion. But since then, sales have nosedived!
Tesla’s net income plummeted 71% in Q1 2025, down to $409 million. Tesla attributed this to increased spending on AI and model refreshes. This is partially true, but the massive decline in sales is a far, far larger reason.
However, in 2025 Q1, Tesla earned $595 million in these regulatory credits. In other words, Tesla is operationally in the red; it is only these government credits that keep it profitable.
The next few quarters are expected to be even more brutal for Tesla, with them sitting on $800 million worth of unsold Cybertrucks, sales falling even further across Europe, and the expensive launch of the wildly unsafe Cybercab rapidly approaching. And, given that even high-level Tesla insiders are willing to openly admit that the Cybercab and Tesla Bot won’t be even remotely profitable, this income drought is likely to last for years. So, Tesla might desperately need these credits just to break even.
Let me also remind you that if the shine falls off Tesla, investors stop buying the hype, or investors see no route to profitability, Tesla’s stock will be valued in accordance with other automakers. That will cause Tesla to collapse, because Tesla will be worth less than its debts (read more here).
Musk knows that losing these credits could cause the destruction of Tesla to rapidly snowball out of his control, alongside most of his wealth. Considering he has the greed of a billionaire, this, too, could be enough to turn him against Trump.
Which is it?
Sadly, or rather thankfully, I can’t read Musk’s mind. It could be a combination of all of these factors, or I’m completely wrong, and it’s the drugs making him act weird again. If I’m honest, understanding the actions of a madman is a fool’s errand. But, at the same time, this is a madman whose actions affect every living person on the planet, so we must undertake this fool’s errand if we want to protect what we love. This is one of the many reasons why it is so hard to combat right-wing extremists; they send us down blind alleys.
Either way, the Trump-Musk train appears to be derailing. That alone might be reason enough to celebrate, as divided, both are far weaker and more vulnerable than they are together. This is also why far-right movements often fail — their ideology begs for infighting, leading the group to eventually fracture. Could this be the first domino to fall in MAGA’s downfall? Possibly.
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Sources: BI, CarbonCredits.com, BBC, Will Lockett, CNBC, Will Lockett, CNBC, Will Lockett, Will Lockett, AXIOS, The Independent, Truthout, Yahoo, PC Mag, Midas Touch
Just spitballing here but he may also be trying to make the best of a bad situation. You’ve painted a picture of a house of cards just waiting to collapse -- Tesla drowning in debt, Cybercab and humanoid robots dead DOA, Starship fundamentally flawed, etc. In that case, being able to blame Trump for killing his businesses is preferable to them going belly up on Elon’s watch. It at least gives him the chance to preserve his “mystique.”
As an aside, these massive tax cuts are the tax cuts in the 2017 budget that Republicans passed under reconciliation rules that require them to expire at the end of this year. Reconciliation spending has to include provisions that prevent exploding the national debt, in this case having them expire. Pushing a renewal of the cuts obviates that protection. The Senate has to try to pass this budget under reconciliation again because they don’t have 60 votes. The OMB of course has shown that the bill blows up the debt so reconciliation doesn’t apply. Watch for John Thune to walk back his promise to follow the reconciliation rules. But Musk’s thumb on the scales may kill that effort. Not extending the tax cuts would avoid the cuts to Medicaid and Medicare that Republican constituents are yelling about. Without knowing what Musk’s reasons are, we can say he has just made Thune’s job a hundred times more difficult.