President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are in the midst of an extremely online feud. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
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President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s relationship has deteriorated into a bitter feud, lighting up Musk’s social media platform X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
Trump is no longer quite as online as he used to be (in his peak, the man was an extremely dedicated Twitter poster who regularly went viral), but Musk’s timeline is as active as ever.
Musk seemed to lay the groundwork for the feud by retweeting several old tweets from Trump in an attempt to portray the president as a hypocrite.
From there, the feud only escalated, much to the delight of X’s inhabitants.
What Sparked The Feud Between Trump And Musk?
Musk recently left the White House, seemingly on good terms, but in exceptionally strange circumstances.
Musk appeared on camera with a black eye and a “Dogefather” t-shirt, before he was given a symbolic golden key to the White House, engraved with the Reddit logo.
The world’s richest man certainly succeeded in introducing stale meme culture to the highest office in the land, but the political alliance unraveled a few days later, as Musk began to criticize Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” for raising the debt ceiling.
Trump responded, suggesting that Musk was beginning to suffer from “Trump derangement syndrome” and claimed that this was a common ailment for those who left his inner circle.
Trump also said that Musk was upset that the electric vehicle tax credit was removed, and that Musk was otherwise supportive of the bill.
Musk’s tone began to grow more aggressive on X, as he wrote:
“False, this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!”
Musk then claimed that Trump would have lost the election without his help, and accused Trump of showing “ingratitude.”
Trump began to respond on Truth Social, his own social media platform, writing that the easiest way to save money in the budget would be to “terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.”
Trump continued, writing that Musk was “wearing thin” at the White House and claiming that Musk “just went CRAZY!” when the EV tax credit was removed from his bill.
Musk responded on X, describing Trump’s post as an “obvious lie,” and then went nuclear, alleging that Trump was “in the Epstein files.”
Musk described his own post as the “really big bomb” and even took the time to tag Trump’s official X account.
The site’s users took great joy in watching the feud in real time, responding to the showdown between the president and the world’s wealthiest man with jokes and memes.
The Trump Vs. Musk Feud Inspired Hilarious Memes
Several comparisons were made to the Kendrick vs. Drake feud.
Others compared the feud to a divorce, and resurrected the weird J.D. Vance memes, framing the vice president as the troubled child of bickering parents.
Kanye West tweeted as though he was that child, pleading with the two to stop fighting.
Most viewed the Trump vs. Musk feud as one of the greatest days in Twitter history, cracking jokes about how difficult it was to stay on top of the flood of memes.
Many X inhabitants mocked the users that migrated to rival platform, Bluesky, noting that the toxicity and melodrama was an integral part of the X experience.
Spectators were so keen to catch Trump’s response on Truth Social that they temporarily crashed the site.
Not content with the president’s silence, some passed the time by posting fake responses from Trump.
Many joked that Tesla was now going to face hostility from all sides of the political spectrum.
Some users claimed that they always knew the feud was coming—the burning Tesla CyberTruck outside of the Trump hotel that marked the beginning of this year was viewed as an omen.
When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) was asked her opinion of the feud, she responded with, “The girls are fighting, aren’t they?”
AOC went on to describe the feud as “a long time coming. We were saying that these two huge egos were not long for being together in this world as friends.”
Azealia Banks, who first popularized the phrase “the girls are fighting,” was shocked that AOC was familiar with her meme, writing “in what world is AOC fluent in Azealia Banksism’s?”
For now, Trump and Musk appear to have put down their phones, marking something of a ceasefire.
The internet awaits the next round with baited breath—the two powerful, mercurial men both surely want to have the last word.
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