The End of the Bromance

Elon Musk, Trump, and the Big Beautiful Betrayal

In a flurry of fury on Twitter—sorry, X—Elon Musk did what he does best: light a match and toss it into the political tinderbox. This time, the spark came in the form of a loaded accusation:

“In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people.”

The word betrayed wasn’t chosen lightly. It’s not the calculated language of a technocrat lamenting poor fiscal stewardship. It’s the anguished cry of someone who feels personally shafted.

And here’s the twist: he kind of was.

Elon Musk—billionaire messiah of disruption, breaker of unions, peddler of self-driving dreams—bankrolled Donald Trump’s campaign. Trump took the money, gave Elon a few shoutouts, tossed him a novelty cabinet role (Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE—because of course), and promptly kicked him to the curb after less than five months.

Now, the very policies Musk was supposedly recruited to challenge have not only returned—they’ve been supersized.

Enter: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Yes, that’s its real name. And yes, a grown adult with speechwriters, handlers, and presumably a shred of shame signed off on it. The Trump family’s flair for branding remains proudly devoid of subtlety.

To be fair, the label is two-thirds accurate: it’s big, and it’s certainly a bill. Beauty, however, is subjective. The contents? Not so pretty.

At over a thousand pages, the bill reads like a fever dream of conservative wish-fulfilment: sweeping tax cuts (mostly for the rich), deep cuts to Medicaid (health insurance for the poor), and eye-watering billions earmarked for immigration enforcement and—you guessed it—the border wall. That wall Trump’s been promising to build quickly since 2015. (Fun fact: Mexico still isn’t paying for it.)

The Congressional Budget Office—the American equivalent of our PBO—crunched the numbers. Their verdict? This bill will blast a $2.5 trillion crater in the federal budget over the next decade. Not million. Not billion. Trillion. With a T. It’s fiscal napalm.

Oh, and while we’re tallying costs: around 10.9 million Americans could lose health coverage. That’s the kind of thing that, in any remotely humane society, would set off alarm bells. In Trump’s Washington, it’s a Tuesday.

But don’t expect reasoned rebuttals from the White House. Instead, Trump’s team dismissed the CBO as biased. Just another institution “out to get them.”

According to Trump’s economic gospel, those tax cuts will trigger such an economic boom that the revenue will magically appear, erasing the deficit like it’s being photoshopped out of existence. Throw in some selective tariff revenue, stir in a little bluster, and voila: fiscal responsibility.

In reality, it’s nonsense. A pyramid of spin atop a scaffold of delusion, all built on assumptions that would insult our intelligence if we hadn’t already seen this movie before. Republicans, after all, have perfected the art of preaching fiscal rectitude out of power, only to detonate the budget when they regain it.

Spend on welfare? Irresponsible. Spend on tax cuts for billionaires? Bold leadership.

Is it any wonder Elon Musk—avatar of disruption, master of moving fast and breaking things—feels used?

To Musk, his role in DOGE was a genuine mission. He wasn’t there to pad resumes. He thought he was brought in to overhaul a bloated, inefficient federal bureaucracy. And while DOGE was a mess—sacking staff only to rehire them weeks later, inventing savings with imaginary maths—Musk at least believed in the goal. He thought he was part of something real.

Then he showed up, and learned that nobody else did.

In retrospect, Musk’s naivety is staggering. Trump ran on fixing the deficit in 2016, then proceeded to blow it out. Why on Earth did Elon think the sequel would be any different? Maybe he bought too deeply into his own algorithm’s feedback loop. Maybe he mistook performative respect for actual political buy-in.

Either way, he’s now discovering what countless others have learned before him: Trump loyalty is transactional. Always was.

Even so-called fiscal hawks are playing along. Senator Rand Paul—once a champion of deficit discipline—announced:

“While I oppose increasing the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, I enthusiastically support making the tax cuts permanent and could vote for the Big not-yet-Beautiful Bill if the debt ceiling were voted on separately.”

That’s not a policy position. It’s a drunk text to an ex. It’s spineless.

The truth is, Elon Musk helped build this moment. His donations, his influence, his digital platform—all amplified the Trump machine. And now that machine is running over everything he thought he stood for.

Barely four months in the administration. No legacy. No results. And a single bill wipes away everything he hoped to achieve. The same people who once fawned over his “genius” are now ghosting him like a bad date.

There was a time when people feared Musk would use the White House to advance his business interests.

Turns out, it was Trump’s team using him all along.