The apparent end of the on-off bromance between former President Donald Trump and Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is perhaps not entirely surprising given the volatile nature of their relationship over the years.
Just over two years of apparent cordiality between the pair came to an abrupt end over the weekend when Mr Trump called Mr Musk “another bulls*** artist” for saying he’d never voted Republican before, and laid into the billionaire for cancelling a deal to buy Twitter.
The former president’s remarks came after Mr Musk announced on Friday he would not buy the social media platform and accused the company of misleading him about the number of bots and automated accounts.
“Elon, Elon is not gonna buy Twitter,” Mr Trump told supporters in Anchorage on Saturday, saying that he had said that before. “Well, he might later, who the hell knows what’s going to happen? He’s got a pretty rotten contract, elegant, his contract, not a good contract.”
The former president further said: “You know, he said the other day, oh, I’d never voted for a Republican. I said, I didn’t know that. He told me he voted for me. So he’s another bulls*** artist, but he’s not going to be buying it.”
Mr Musk responded to a tweet containing the former president’s quote and said: “Not true.”
In another reply below the same tweet, Mr Musk said it was time for Mr Trump to “hang up his hat”.
“I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset,” he said.
It appears the pair may be right back where they started. Go back six years to 2016 and Mr Musk, now the world’s richest man, dismissed the then-Republican nominee as “not the right man for the job”, characterised the election as not “the finest moment in our democracy in general”, and told CNBC he believed Hillary Clinton’s economic and environmental policies were “the right ones”.
Four days after making those comments, Mr Trump was elected president. Mr Musk said later: “I feel a bit stronger that he is not the right guy,” adding: “He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.”
Nevertheless, as the president-elect prepared for government, Mr Musk joined other Silicon Valley leaders in a meeting with Mr Trump and was named as a member of the White House economic advisory council.
It soon became clear that this was not going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship when just six months into the Trump presidency, Mr Musk quit the council over the president’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accords.
He tweeted: “Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”
However, the relationship warmed again in January 2020, when Mr Trump called Mr Musk “one of our great geniuses”, likening him to Edison and saying the US should “cherish” such people.
The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the subsequent lockdowns, and the debate about reopening the US economy, put Mr Musk and the then-president on the same page, with both calling for the lifting of restrictions by states.
They spoke on the phone about the topic and when Mr Musk reopened his Tesla factory in California in defiance of a county order, Mr Trump tweeted: “California should let Tesla & @elonmusk open the plant, NOW. It can be done Fast & Safely!”
Mr Musk replied: “Thank you!”
Just five weeks before the 2020 election, Mr Musk said he was still undecided about who to vote for and would be watching the debates closely. He said if Joe Biden has “got it together” then he would probably win while characterising Mr Trump as “supportive as he can be” regarding his Tesla business.
With the 2020 campaign, election loss, and attempt to overturn the result dominating Mr Trump’s time, not much was heard of the relationship between the pair for some time.
Following the Capitol riot and his permanent ban from Twitter, Mr Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr called on Mr Musk to create his own social media platform to “blow Twitter away” and save “free speech in America”.
Maybe that was part of the genesis of Mr Musk’s ambitions to buy Twitter, as not long after he announced his plans to do so in April 2022, he said he would reverse Mr Trump’s ban from the platform, calling the decision a “mistake” and saying that there should be a greater reluctance to “delete things” and a more cautious approach to de-platforming users.
With Republicans delighted at the prospect of a Trump return to Twitter, the following month Mr Musk capped off months of criticism of President Biden by revealing that while in the past he had “overwhelmingly” voted for Democrats, he would now vote Republican, calling the Democrats the “party of division & hate”.
In the meantime, Mr Trump had launched his own platform Truth Social, which Mr Musk offered some thoughts about on Twitter pointing out that it was above both the micro-blogging platform and TikTok in the Apple app store.
“Truth Social (terrible name) exists because Twitter censored free speech,” Mr Musk tweeted. “Should be called Trumpet instead!”
For his part, Mr Trump praised the billionaire’s decision to buy Twitter and called him “a good man”, though he told Fox News that he had no plans to return to the platform even if Mr Musk bought it.
“I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH. I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on TRUTH,” he said.
The pair were once again in agreement that the problem with Twitter that they both perceived was a preponderance of bots and fake accounts, which Mr Musk cited as a reason for ultimately deciding to not proceed with his purchase of the platform.
Despite the apparent bonhomie, Mr Musk then tweeted out in June that he was leaning towards supporting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over Trump in the 2024 election adding that he has a “better chance of winning”.
In addition to saying that former president Trump should “sail into the sunset”, Mr Musk also said over this past weekend that “Dems should also call off the attack – don’t make it so that Trump’s only way to survive is to regain the presidency.”
When asked by a conservative talk show host on Twitter regarding what Mr Musk’s issue with the Trump presidency was, the SpaceX founder said there was “too much drama”.
“Do we really want a bull in a china shop situation every single day!? Also, I think the legal maximum age for start of Presidential term should be 69,” he added.
In a reply to another tweet in which a user suggested Florida governor Ron DeSantis run as Mr Trump’s vice president for 2024 and then for president in 2028, Mr Musk said: “Trump would be 82 at end of term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America.
“If DeSantis runs against [Joe] Biden in 2024, then DeSantis will easily win – he doesn’t even need to campaign,” he added.
