Bulwark Takes - Trump Goes Nuclear on Elon Musk in Oval Office Freakout!

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Trump publicly attacks Elon Musk during a White House press conference, accusing him of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" and blaming him for turning hostile. Musk fires back online, claiming Trump owes him credit for GOP victories. The feud exposes personal grudges, ego clashes, and policy tensions, especially over electric vehicle subsidies and a controversial bill. Trump makes a chilling comparison between the Ukraine war and a playground fight, drawing widespread criticism.

Rural communities are being squeezed from every side. From rising health care costs to crumbling hospitals, from attacks on public schools to the fight for paid family and medical leave, farmers and small businesses are reeling from the trade war. And now, Project 2025 is back with a plan to finish what Elon Musk started. Trump and the Republicans won rural votes, then turned their backs on us. Join the One Country Project for the Rural Progress Summit, July 8th through the 10th.

This free virtual event brings together leaders like Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Governor Andy Beshear, and others for real talk and real solutions. Together we'll tackle the most urgent issues facing rural America. Register today or learn more at ruralprogress.com. Hey guys, Tim Miller from The Bullwork here

with Andrew Egger who writes our Morning Shots newsletter, which is check out at the board.com also white house reporter for the bulwark and some stuff happened at the white house today. Trump had a bilat a meeting today in the office with German chancellor Friedrich Merz newly elected, relatively newly elected. And they talked about a wide range of issues. He likes to turn these things into circuses as we have, we've seen this circus a few times by now. And there are a few things I wanted to get into with you Andrew. First was Trump for the first time really popping off against Elon Musk and he'd made a couple of bleats like, you know, about he's disappointed, but he really goes after him here. And I want to play the first clip where Trump accuses Eli of something

that you and me have been accused of many times, having Trump derangement syndrome. Let's watch. Things are happening in this room. And I'll tell you, he's not the first. People leave my administration and they love us. And then at some some point they miss it so badly and some of them embrace it and some of them actually become hostile. I don't know what it is it's sort of Trump derangement syndrome I guess they call it but we have it with others too. They leave and they wake up in the morning and the glamour's gone, the whole world is different, and they become hostile.

I don't know what it is. Someday you'll write a book about it and you'll let us know. I want to dial in on one part that Trump, I think, has an accidental insight here. But before we get to my observation, Andrew, what did you make of Trump's kind of full frontal attack on Elon there in the Oval Office? Oh, man, it's such a rich text. And this is the kind of thing that's been kind of coming. We've been able to see it coming for a little while. You know, Elon has been going off against the big, beautiful bill. Obviously, he's no longer in government directly working on Doge.

But he had been mostly focusing his fire on congressional Republicans before. Then just in the last day or so, he has really started to turn on Trump himself, actually call Trump out as, truthfully, as the kind of the architect and the driving force behind this bill. It was so interesting to see Trump in this meeting because Trump has no problem with punching back. Obviously, it's been his main thing forever. But there was like a plaintiveness or something almost to it. He almost seemed a little bit forlorn in this particular context because I think he really

has really liked working with Elon all this time. He has this hilarious respect for Elon as a guy who knows a lot about computers, which Trump himself does not really his bag. He's like, oh, he's the guy who puts the computers in the cars and he can do all that stuff. Nevertheless, I am forced to now nuke him from orbit because he's going after me on the internet. As is typical with Trump, he hits you wherever your weakest. He hits Elon on a few things that are basically invented, the Trump Derangement Syndrome and sorts of

things like that. But then he also goes after his actual weak spots, like the electric car subsidies and the fact that he tried to corruptly get his buddy installed as the head of NASA and stuff like that. So it's all getting uglier than I expected, certainly faster than I expected, certainly between these two guys. And I don't know where it goes from here. Yeah, the plaintiveness is funny, as for any elder millennial indie fans out there that makes me think of the Dandy Warhol song about we used to be friends. Yes, time ago.

You know, it's like I'm getting a little sad and Trump doesn't really have real friends. You know, it's like you met I think he imagines he kind of imagined that Putin was his friend and this morning to get into this in the second part of the press conference on talking about he kind of imagined that he was his friend. I don't think you know, part of the sad part of you know about, he kind of imagined that Yvonne was his friend. Because I don't think part of the sad part of the fact that he's a 78-year-old is a black hole in his heart, which is part of, I think, what allowed him to have this political success. The other side of that coin is, I don't know that he's ever actually achieved a mature male friendship and understand what that is like. And I think it's a little different than these friendships of

convenience. Can I say one quick thing on that as well, which is just that I really do think there's something really deep to that because he's constantly surrounded by these people who are just the biggest suckups who have ever existed anywhere and with good reason because he is unable to actually surround himself with people who don't suck up to him because he kicks them to the curb. But I think he does feel like the absence of that. And that's part of why, you know, guys like Musk, and even guys like, you know, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who he perceives bring something kind of different to the table. They're not just reflecting him back to him. He has that kind of

unique sort of respect for them. But then obviously, that can only last for so long, because they also, as soon as they start going after him for any reason, he is kicking them out to the curb as well. So yes, it's a sad story. Ben today. The most interesting thing about this to me from just a political strategist standpoint and tactics is Trump has kind of finally met his chaos agent match. Like Trump has this big benefit, like always, where he's going against these normal politicians, where like they would attack him in a normal way in a press release or in a press conference. And then Trump would like do unhinged honey badger shit back at them. Like no politician has ever done and like has no rules and there's no campaign manager vetting his comments and he's

just like you know blasting off and so it gave him advantage like on both speed and intensity just across a couple of metrics Trump had this advantage but Elon is like him like a totally unhinged insane poster right and so um here it is, rail time. Elon Musk tweets, without me, Trump would have lost the election. Dems would control the House and Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude. Oh my lord, yes! They're both, okay, so this is, we didn't even talk about this, but they are now both. I mean, this is the other thing that Trump said. He's like, I didn't need Elon to win Pennsylvania, you know, I would have been just fine without him. So they are really cutting straight

to the heart of each other's core grip on the party. And oh, man, that's so good. I honestly feel like Elon, just as a poster, is more unhinged and more insane than Trump. He does a lot more drugs than Donald Trump does, and he's way more online, just chronically online in a way that Trump never has been. So yeah, we've been talking about this forever, right?

I mean, we've been saying, if Trump and Musk were ever to break up, it would be like the knockdown drag out fight to end all knockdown drag out fights, because Elon is not just like a moon to Trump's son. Like almost any of these other guys, Trump kicks them to the curb. They lose their lifeline to any relevance in Republican politics and it's just over for them.

Elon has this humongous megaphone, his huge independent platform, all his money, all his companies, he owns Twitter X, as he likes to say. And yeah, who's going to back down? How does this end? I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen next. This is crazy. I want to see a public debate.

Bring it on. I want to see it. We'll host it at the Bulwark. Anybody. That will be a ratings bonanza. Yeah. Level playing field. We hate those guys both. Yeah, that's true. Exactly. You can't call me biased. If it's both of them on there, who would I be biased against? So I want to get you... There were two specific items that I just wanted to drill down on. One is you mentioned this accusation about the fact that Elon's real motive here is the car subsidies. I'm going to get to that next. But first, I want to talk about something because it goes to the heart of what I wrote about in

my book. So I feel like it's the one thing I have expertise on, which is the psycho rationale, you know, the kind of psychology of the Trump enabler. And Trump, he's almost there to getting it, but he like observed something that I wrote about in the book, he just didn't lead it to the same conclusion that I did. And he says this. Okay, he's discussing what happens to people who work for him and then leave the White House. He says, they leave, and they wake up in the morning, and the glamour is gone. The whole world is different, and they become hostile. That's actually very insightful. This is true. People do go to work

for him because they're interested in the trampings of it. They're either adrenaline junkies, or they want to ride on Air Force One, or they want to tell their friends about how they're this funny story that happened behind the scenes, they're around the president like that is the appeal of going in for Trump. And when that is gone, then people can kind of see a little bit more clearly. And oftentimes, that all many of them will start to change their tune. And as Trump has become hostile, as I would put it, they start to just say the truth, and they start to just observe reality, right? And they start to stop, you know, the, the, once the drug is worn off, like, you know, they, they're a little bit more clear minded, right? They don't have this like buzz of being around

all these chains. Again, this isn't something that appealed to me, but for these people, like being around all the Trump people on these D-list celebrities that I've had in all the words, like, and Trump, like, basically gets, like, he basically clocks them and Gareld would call this a read. He basically reads the Scaramoochies and musks of the world accurately. I just think he doesn't quite take the very last step to analyzing why it is that they become hostile. Right, right. Yeah. And I think when we were talking about kind of that, like, forlorn edge to it, I think that's, that's part of what's going on here as well, where he's like, man, in

my heart, I kind of thought Elon might be different. I thought he might not have been one of these fake friend, you know, striver climbers, but no, he's just like all the rest of them. Ah, man, so hard. It's so hard to, you know, when you're at the... It's so lonely at the top. It is lonely at the top. All right. Just really quick on the, on this, like the main accusation that's going to be leveled to the on from Trump and from his defenders and who's seeing some of this from Breitbart and other places is that this is all just because he wants his subsidies for the electric

car. Now, Elon has pushed back on this. He is again, he's rapid responding in real time. He tweeted essentially that he, you could keep those. He doesn't care. He's like, he does think it's a little unfair exclamation point that they didn't get rid of any of the subsidies for the oil and gas folks. But this is not actually his rationale. What do you make of that back and forth, either on the merits or on just the politics of it?

I don't. I honestly don't know. It's so hard to get down inside these guys' brains at a certain level, especially Elon, because it's never clear. Plainly, he does have all these business interests. And at any point in time, he could be trying to tend to any of them. And yet, at the same time, the way he has approached politics has been so hostile

to his own business interests in so many different ways. It's been good for them in a lot of ways. Don't get me wrong. I mean, he's gotten the opportunity to really cozy up to power and plainly he's made the most of that. But at the same time, like the way in which he has set Tesla's public brand just on fire in a completely predictable way that has played out exactly as anyone could have predicted and the way that he has approached all of these things in such a manic, obsessive, poster brain, internet poisoned kind of way. All of that just lends, at least in my view, lends itself to the hypothesis that really none of this is all that calculated, that he really is

lashed to his own algorithms. He's getting mad about things he's seeing online and seeing offline and posting about them and then getting mad at the responses to the posting and just kind of getting mad about being blamed and being scapegoated with Doge where he's just like, what I was doing was good. It's what these guys are doing that's bad. Why am I getting blamed? It's a little of an interpersonal. I agree with that. On the rapid response, Elon Musk, he should be hired for you know, for one of these committees, aren't, you know, one of these political committees should hire him as the rapid response director, a job I once had. False, this bill is never, he's refined to Trump saying that he'd be

honored seeing the bill and he just changed his mind over the EV mandate. False, this bill was never shown to be even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it. True. Yeah, true. Another, once again, a line on the merits on this one. I, well, I don't want to seem biased in case we host the debate. I have a lot of issues with the line. Don't like Elon on the merits of the argument over the BBB. Elon seems to be in the right on almost everything. Can we dwell for one more second on the second on the personal psychology for Elon in particular?

Because I think he is going to go thermonuclear on this the more I think about it. Because he, I mean, you put yourself in his shoes, he came into this relationship. He did an actual lot of work that Donald Trump is trying to take credit for. He was kind of actually doing all of the Doge stuff, which was horrible, but in his mind

was this righteous crusade. Unlike Donald Trump, Trump's people always say, Trump gave up so much to come into here. Trump still has all of his companies. He's still making money hand over fist in all of these different ways. He's profiting off the presidency in a million different ways. Elon has actually suffered financially a lot from this whole turn in Doge. He has set so much money on fire. He didn't intend to, but that's the way it's worked out. And now he's out of there. He feels like the Doge process is getting totally obliterated by this bill. That's one of the things he's mad about that they're not codifying any of his spending cuts. And he's having to go back to now tend to the ruins of his business empire, such as they are. And now Trump's kicking him on

the way out. I mean, he is, and he takes a lot of drugs and he posts on the internet a lot. So like, who knows, who knows what the future holds for, you know, 3am tweets from Elon Musk, but I can't imagine they're going to be boring. You said something that sparked a thought, which is, this is something I never would have betted on, important to have pundit accountability. Just from a pure businessman perspective, Trump has outbusinessed Elon on the grift and the White House. I don't know if they saw it as a competition, but Trump is going to have increased his wealth unimaginably by when he leaves like generational family Trump wealth will be accrued thanks to the grift that he is running right now. Elon on the other hand

losing money. It is it is an interesting observation. Okay. Run out of time. I just want to do really quick on this. Obviously, ostensibly this meeting was supposed to be about international global affairs since the German Chancellor is sitting there during all of it. And I want to talk about one element of an overlapping, call it an overlapping interest at this point, might be overstated, an overlapping, they both, maybe they don't not have the same interest anymore in the Ukraine-Russia war, but they both have an interest. And that is Trump's response to, I think this is the first time he's spoken about his call with Putin from earlier this week. And I want to watch that.

Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy. They hate each other and they're fighting in a park. And you try and pull them apart. They don't want to be pulled. Sometimes you're better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart. And I gave that analogy to Putin yesterday. I said, President, maybe you're going to have to keep fighting and suffering a lot because both

sides are suffering before you pull them apart, before they're able to be pulled apart. But it's a pretty known analogy. You have two kids, they fight, fight, fight. Sometimes you let them fight for a little while. You see it in hockey, you see it in sports. The referees let them go for a couple of seconds, let them go for a little while before you pull them apart.

And maybe, maybe, and I said it, and maybe that's a negative because we're saying go, but a lot of bad blood, there's some bad blood between the two. I have to deal with it and the chancellor has to deal with it. It's incredible. The level of, there's a great hatred between those two, between those two men, but between the warring parties, great hatred. This is such the wrong analogy here. I could totally, like that is not what is happening.

It's not two kids roughhousing. It was one bully like coming in and trying to beat the fuck out of another kid. And by the way, the kid that's getting the fuck beaten out of them was our ally. And and our friend and the friend group, if we want to extend this school boy torture, this school yard analogy, and what Trump is saying is basically that I'm just gonna go ahead and let let Putin keep on doing it. And, oh, by the way, that sanctions bill that Lindsey Graham and those guys are trying to do in Congress. So he's like, I haven't even looked at it.

I'm not for it. So not a lot of encouraging comments there if you're one of the few, the proud, the remaining pro-Ukraine Republicans. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that whole business about like, you know, maybe once they've like had the opportunity to rough each other up a little bit,

then they'll be more amenable to talk. I mean, like that is so ghoulish. I mean, how many years into this are we? I mean, how many, there was a report, I forget who put it out. We wrote about it in morning shots yesterday or the day before. Something like 1.5 million total casualties

in this conflict since it was launched. A million Russian casualties, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian casualties, obviously dead and wounded combined. But I mean, just the grinding human misery of this conflict has been so astonishing. And it's Vladimir Putin's fucking fault. You know, like he's the one who did it.

He's the one who went in. And yeah, I mean, like, you can, you can talk about the gross, you know, moral equivalency there. You can talk about the just so contemptible way in which Trump himself in the, in his own views on the war is so obviously sort of mercurial and ungrounded. And, and he, you know, the longer he's off the phone with Putin, the more he kind of like starts to get swayed around to, you know, the somewhat more pro-Ukraine view. And then he gets a phone call with Putin, he chats with him for a few minutes, and he's instantly back to being like, you know, I hadn't thought about it this way in a while, you know,

you think the guy raises some excellent points. And it's just so and he runs the, he runs our policy. It's so weak. It's so ungrounded. He doesn't have deep beliefs. He doesn't even have deep thoughts about the whole thing. I mean, he's just like, oh yeah, sounds pretty good, Vlad. That's a good point. I guess the fake news aren't talking about it quite that way over here. So yeah, it's also ghoulish and gross. I don't know what to say about it. It's really disgraceful. All right, final thing. This stuff is all happening in real time here. Elon Musk has unfollowed Stephen Miller on Twitter. So that's when you know things have

gotten bad. Boy, the kids are fighting. Then another interesting sub note of that. Stephen Miller's wife left the White House to work for Elon. I'm just going to let people sit with that one for a second and maybe we'll talk about it on tomorrow's podcast with Sam Stein. Andrew Egger, thank you so much for coming on. Hop on quickly. Everybody else subscribe to the feed. We'll be back soon.