Musk Snaps Back to Reality?

What ended the honeymoon period?

Musk & Trump — WikiCC

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.