Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Big, Beautiful Blow-Up Could Tank the Megabill

The fate of Donald Trump’s megabill in the Senate was already uncertain. Then came the spectacular dissolution of his alliance with Elon Musk, who began the week railing against the legislation and ended it with a battery of attacks—including alleging that the president has ties to Jeffrey Epstein and suggesting that he should be impeached and replaced by Vice President JD Vance. Suddenly, Republicans—who’d spent months watching with delight as the two took flamethrowers to the nation’s democratic institutions—found themselves caught in the crossfire as the former allies took aim at one another.

Most, to this point, have aligned themselves with their official boss: “President Trump has done more than any person in my lifetime to earn the trust of the movement he leads,” Vance posted, several hours after Musk suggested he take the reins. “I’m proud to stand beside him.”

But the vice president’s careful statement, and the public efforts in Trumpworld to ease hostilities, were telling: Trump may command the bully pulpit and the powers of the presidency, but Musk’s money, platform, and own legion of followers can pose a formidable threat to the MAGA movement .

The most immediate peril, of course, may be for Trump’s so-called “big beautiful bill,” which could turn into a big, beautiful blow-up if House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune can’t find a way to diffuse the situation. Johnson, who narrowly passed the legislation through the lower chamber, has been one of its chief lobbyists as it heads to the other side of the Capitol. And Thune, who can only afford three defections, is trying to get a deal done by Independence Day. “Failure is not an option,” he said on Thursday. But with some in his conference worried about cuts to Medicaid and other programs, and others saying that the cuts don’t go deep enough, failure is certainly in the realm of possibilities.

Musk’s attacks—lobbed from his perch on X, the social media platform he owns—could make the math worse for Thune: “You don’t want the world’s richest guy with the biggest megaphone shitting on the bill in crunchtime,” as a top Hill leader told Politico. He’d only need to persuade a few holdouts, the person noted, and “if he spends [the] next few weeks shitting on the bill, that will move the numbers.”

With that in mind, Johnson has been eager to negotiate a truce between the warring parties. Just one problem, though: “I called Elon last night and he didn’t answer,” the House leader told reporters Wednesday. “It’s very friendly,” he assured, “and we’ve laughed about our differences on policy before.”

But while much of the nation indeed watched this drama play out with plenty of mirth, there have been more tears than laughter in MAGAland since the feud broke open: “It’s hard to see a path forward for these two to repair their relationship,” Fox News’ Will Cain lamented Thursday.

The fear, it seems, is that the acrimony could upend more than the “big beautiful bill.” Since Musk threw in his lot with Trump, they and their allies have gotten everything they wanted: Musk enjoyed virtually unchecked power; Trump enjoyed a virtually unlimited war chest; and Republicans enjoyed rubbing their newfound political and cultural might in the faces of their opponents. The fracture in Trump and Musk’s relationship threatens to fracture their broader political fantasy: “Who else really wants [Musk and Trump] to reconcile?” Senator Mike Lee asked on X. “The world is a better place with the Trump-Musk bromance fully intact.”