Global News Podcast - Trump-Musk relationship implodes with insults and threats

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are involved in a rapidly escalating row, a week after the billionaire businessman left his job as a US presidential adviser. Also: gaming fans queue to buy the Nintendo Switch 2.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard. And in the early hours of Friday, the sixth of June, these are our main stories. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are having a furious and public row a week after Mr. Musk left his job at the White House. Benjamin Netanyahu has confirmed that Israel is arming a Palestinian militia in Gaza that's been accused of looting aid convoys. And Israel has carried out airstrikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, saying it's targeting Hezbollah drone production.

Also in this podcast... We haven't been able to confirm, but MCC members will continuously attempt to communicate. We need to never quit the lunar quest. A Japanese company hoping to make lunar history has lost contact with a spacecraft it was trying to land on the moon. It was probably inevitable that the bromance between the US President Donald Trump and the world's richest man Elon Musk wouldn't last forever. And now just days after Mr. Musk officially left his government post as head of Doge, the two men are now

embroiled in a very public row. After Mr. Musk criticized Mr. Trump's spending bill which he claimed would bankrupt America, President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he was disappointed in Mr Musk. Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we're well anymore. I was surprised because he said wonderful things about me. You couldn't have nicer said the best things. But I'm very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here.

And if you saw the statements he made about me, which I'm sure you can get very easily, it's very fresh on tape, he said the most beautiful things about me. And he hasn't said bad about me personally, but I'm sure that'll be next. But I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot. Well, that was just the beginning. Both men have been trading insults on their own social media platforms, Donald Trump on Truth Social and Elon Musk on X.

Our correspondent in Washington, Jake Kwan, told us more about this spectacular falling out. For the last hours, we were all glued to our phone and television, just jaws dropped to the floor. We could not really look away from this spectacular fallout that is happening in a very public manner. And you know, there were kind of speculations as well as building up a small tensions between Mr. Trump and Elon Musk.

But like only six days ago that the White House, Mr. Trump handed this golden key to the White House to Elon on a warm kind of send off. And now what we are having is this really public and personal attack happening between these two, probably the two, one of the most powerful people on the planet. And it all started unraveling when Mr. Trump was asked about what he thought of Elon saying in recent days, you know, all these criticism about his big, beautiful bill, the spending bill that Elon said is going to bankrupt America, that is going to add trillions of dollars of deficit. And then he said, you know, he was disappointed in Elon and that, you know, maybe it's because

Elon is upset at him because he did not back friend of Elon as the head of NASA, the space agency. Maybe it's because the spending bill is going to cut some of the subsidies to Tesla, Elon's company. And then Elon Musk started firing back online on social media almost immediately on his social media platform X. He accused the president of being ungrateful that it really he owes the White House to him and his his, you know, spending of millions of dollars in the campaign. He also, unbelievably, he also suggested without evidence that Mr. Trump appears in an unreleased files held by government relating to the late billionaire sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. And he also said Mr. Trump should be impeached and replaced by his vice president, JD Vance. This is a very senior advisor to the White House

who just left, you know, six days ago saying that his boss that he was working for now should be removed. So you can imagine how incredible the today has been. And does any of this stuff potentially hurt Mr. Trump? I mean Elon is somebody who holds a lot of influence. He has millions of audience on his social media ex, and he also has nearly bottomless war chest. And he has been influential in Washington with exactly with that. He was threatening to put pressure on these Republican lawmakers to vote against this bill.

He's been urging them quite explicitly. And he did commit millions of dollars. He did promise that he will spend another 100 million dollars to help these lawmakers get re-elected. So he could easily take that money away or start funding people who are opposing Mr Trump's agenda. So the threat is very real. That was Jake Kwan in Washington. Well, the row between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has had an impact on the US markets. Tesla's stock price plunged, as we heard from our business correspondent Erin Delmore in New York.

It's a bruising day for Tesla shares. We saw the share price close down around 14 percent today. And that's just a big slide after we saw this spat begin to unfold and in fact I think we have to call it something stronger than a spat at this point because both men are really dug in and really trying to hit the other where it hurts. You know for Elon Musk it's a bit of a race to the bottom here. It's because he's already served his time within the Trump administration as part of the Doge task force and that really served to alienate a bunch of liberals from the product

brand, from Tesla EVs. You know these were generally the people who had been thought to be broadly speaking more environmentally conscious more eager to buy an electric vehicle versus a gas vehicle and we have seen that really take its toll on Tesla sales over the first quarter of the year while Elon Musk was in government but now today what we're seeing is Elon Musk putting the president in his sights and really potentially alienating the MAGA base, the other half of the presumed customer base, as you could see it. Now, this is not going to be something that Tesla shareholders, Tesla investors, Tesla

board members are going to be happy with. I remember being on the conference call and the earnings call when Elon Musk said that he'd be stepping back from government. That was something that his board really welcomed, wanting more of his time, wanting him to focus more solely on his business enterprises and endeavors. So to wade back into the political fray at this point, it's weighing down Tesla stock. It is probably going to weigh down investor confidence too. And it really just comes to the forefront of a bunch of other problems that have really been weighing Tesla down over the course of the last year. Erin Delmore in New York. Israel carried out air strikes on Thursday night on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut. Israel said it was targeting

underground sites used to produce military drones. Southern Beirut is considered a stronghold of Hezbollah which is backed by Iran. Our correspondent Ugo Bachega is in Beirut. So the Israeli military carried out airstrikes on locations it said were being used by Hezbollah to produce drones. State media here in Lebanon are reporting three strikes and this came less than two hours after evacuation warnings were issued by the Israeli military for several buildings in the city's southern suburbs, where Hezbollah is based here in Beirut.

And we've seen footage that appeared to show secondary explosions, so this is a suggestion that ammunition was being stored in at least one of the locations hit. What the Israeli military didn't explain was why this attack had to happen at night. It happened shortly after 10 o'clock here. And especially tonight, which is the eve of Eid al-Adha, which is one of the most important celebrations in Islam. This is the beginning of a four-day holiday here in Lebanon. The streets were packed with people, so there was a lot of chaos and confusion

after those evacuation warnings were issued, as people tried to leave those areas in the south of the city. A lot of people will be wondering there was a ceasefire which was supposed to have come into effect in November, what has happened with that? So there is a ceasefire in place here in Lebanon, it came into force in November ending more than a year of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah obviously is this powerful organization supported by Iran. It's known for being a militia, but here in Lebanon it is also a very powerful political social movement.

And it is considered a terrorist organization by many countries, including the U.S. and the U.K. What we've seen is that since the beginning of the ceasefire Israel has carried out attacks almost every day on targets it says a link to Hezbollah and it says it will continue to act to prevent Hezbollah from rearming. It says that Hezbollah is violating this deal. Now Lebanon says those attacks and also the presence of Israeli soldiers in five positions in southern Lebanon are violations of the deal. And I was in southern Lebanon a few weeks ago with UNIFIL, which is the UN peacekeeping force here in Lebanon, and

what I heard from them is that in their area of operation, so in those areas near the border, what they see is that Hezbollah has been complying with the deal and that Israel has been frequently violating it with drones that violate Lebanese airspace and also with those attacks. So it is a very difficult situation. And what people here suspect is that Israel has been given a green light by the Trump administration

to continue to strike Hezbollah. So these attacks are likely to continue despite protests from the Lebanese authorities. Ugo Bershega in Beirut. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu So these attacks are likely to continue despite protests from the Lebanese authorities. Ugo Bershega in Beirut. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has confirmed that his government is arming a militia in Gaza opposed to Hamas. It's a large clan based in Rafah which claims to provide security for aid convoys, but which has been accused of looting them. Our correspondent in Jerusalem, Sebastian Asher,

has been telling us more. Israeli media said that the Israeli military censor had lifted its censorship and quoting defense sources, saying that essentially the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had authorized, without going through the security cabinet, giving Kalashnikov rifles, I don't know if other weapons as well, but definitely Kalashnikovs to a clan, a group, a criminal gang, a militia, comes under all sorts of names in Ra'far, led by a man called Yasser Abu Shabab.

Now it's a group that is known in Gaza well and it presents itself as being a protector of the aid lorries that are coming in, but is also accused of looting those lorries. So it's quite a combustible collection of elements and it's certainly going to cause Netanyahu quite a lot of political damage. I mean, he's been attacked from both the left and the right, saying that he is endangering Israel's security with this kind of action. But he has come out, there's actually been posted a few words that he said that I've just received saying, what's wrong with it?

It's only good. It only saves the lives of IDF soldiers. So he's essentially defending it. It's only good. It only saves the lives of IDF soldiers. So he's essentially defending it. I mean, the rationale behind it, the way that it's presented in Israeli media, is that this is to be a counterweight to Hamas, to sort of encourage a rival militia to Hamas and also to protect it from Hamas. Well, meanwhile, what's going on with aid? Is more aid getting in? Yes, there has been some more aid, not very much, but this new US and Israeli-backed organisation,

the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has had a very, very bad start, I think one could say in its first week of delivering aid. There were three days, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, when there were terrible incidents amongst tens of thousands of Palestinians who were gathering in the early hours of the morning to go to this one site in the south of Gaza and dozens were killed, hundreds were wounded and multiple eyewitness accounts saying that it was Israeli troops that were firing on them. The Israeli army has denied most of those accusations, though did concede that on Tuesday morning its troops did open fire on what they called suspects coming towards them in a threatening manner.

So the Foundation suspended its operations for a day, for Wednesday, in order to get more safeguards in place, but it reopened in two distribution sites, again in the south of Gaza, in Raffa, and in its latest update it says that it delivered around one and a half million individual meals today with around 27 trucks coming into those two sites. There is dispute over how it gauges for number of meals. I mean a lot of people say that it's actually much lower number than that. Sebastian Ascher in Jerusalem. The German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has urged President Trump to put more pressure on Russia to end the war with Ukraine.

The two men held a news conference in the White House, which was dominated by Mr. Trump, who compared Russia and Ukraine to two children having a fight. Mr. Merz said he believed the US president was pivotal in the process of establishing peace between Kiev and Moscow. We both agree on this war and how terrible this war is going on and we are both looking for ways to stop it very soon. And I told the president before we came in that he is the key person in the world who can really do that now by putting pressure on Russia.

Before meeting the German Chancellor, President Trump and the Chinese leader Xi Jinping held a highly anticipated telephone conversation in an attempt to ease their differences on trade. our China correspondent Laura Bicker reports. The 90-minute call comes after Washington and Beijing have accused the other of breaching a deal reached in Geneva to dramatically reduce trade tariffs. The US claims China has failed to restart shipments of critical minerals and rare earth magnets vital to the car industry. Beijing was angered by new US curbs on computer chips and a decision to revoke the visas of

Chinese students. President Xi reportedly told Donald Trump that Washington should withdraw its negative measures against China. Laura Bicker, the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutter, has set out proposals for the members of the alliance to spend five percent of their economic output on defence. The commitment is well above a target set by the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of three percent in the next parliament. Mr Rutter made the remarks at a summit in Brussels. Also attending was the US defence secretary Pete Hegseth. From Brussels our defence correspondent Jonathan Beale reports.

President Trump has repeatedly berated European allies for not spending enough on their militaries while expecting the US to guarantee their security. His defence secretary, who once referred to Europe as freeloaders, arrived in Brussels calling on NATO allies once again to increase their defence spending to 5% of GDP. The head of the alliance, Mark Rutte, has been working on a formula that will satisfy the US and slightly lessen the blow on stretched government budgets. I will propose an overall investment plan that will total 5% of GDP and defence investment, 3.5% of GDP for core defence spending, this is based on what it will cost to meet the

new capability targets that ministers have just agreed, and 1.5% of GDP per year in defence and security related investments like infrastructure and industry. Details have still to be worked out along with a timetable for meeting that goal, likely to be the 2030s. But Mr Rutter sounded confident that an agreement would be reached at the NATO summit later this month. Pete Hegseth said he'd heard support from many allies, naming Germany and France. He told me he hoped the UK would join them. Well, we think everybody's gonna get there.

We really do. Including the UK. It's important. Well, I think it's important they do. It's important they do. Mr. Rutter is due to discuss the new target with Sakia Starmer next week. So far, the prime minister has said Britain will increase defence spending to 2.5% by 2027,

with an ambition to reach 3% sometime after the next election. In Brussels, few believe the UK would oppose the new target. A handful of NATO countries have still not met the target to spend 2% of their GDP on defence, set more than a decade ago. That was Jonathan Beale in Brussels. Still to come. We need to be able to discriminate which are the cells that have HRV

versus the cells that don't have HRV because we don't want to target them, right? Because that would result in a lot of unwanted toxicities. A new way to make the HIV virus more visible so it can't hide in the body's white blood cells. A Japanese private space company says it's failed to make contact with its lunar lander. It was iSpace's second attempt to be the first non-U.SUS firm to land an uncrewed spacecraft on the moon.

The Tokyo-based company said it had been unable to establish communication with the craft, named Resilience, after its descent on Thursday. Live-streamed flight data showed the lander's altitude rapidly falling to zero shortly before the touchdown time, following an hour-long descent from lunar orbit. An Ice-based commentator said on a live stream that the team at Mission Control was still working to confirm data from the lander. We haven't been able to confirm, but MCC members will continuously attempt to communicate. We need to never quit the lunar quest, as the spirit would like to keep in finishing this live streaming."

iSpace wanted to deploy a small rover to collect soil which would then have become the property of NASA, marking the first commercial transaction on another world. We heard more about the fate of the resilience lunar spacecraft from the astrophysicist Laura Forsyck, who is also the chief executive of the space consultancy Astrolitical. Laura Forsyck, Astrolitical Director, Astrolitical We do know that it was coming in fast and then it lost telemetry, which means they lost contact with it. And that's a bad combination. When it's coming fast and they lose contact,

it probably means it hit the ground hard. So when will we get some more confirmation? Can we expect more confirmation about what happened? Yes, we should expect confirmation. Remember, this happened in the middle of the night Japanese time, so they are probably tired, but they're working throughout the night. And I can expect that we should have more information by tomorrow. And remind us about the mission. What were they actually trying to do? This is their second attempt, attempting to land a privately built and funded lander,

a small one without people on the surface of the moon with a small rover and additional scientific instrumentation to get data on the surface of the moon and to prove that companies can do this kind of thing affordably and reliably. And so what will they take away from this even if it is a failure? Every failure is a learning process. So they will be able to determine what went wrong, just like last time they had a software failure and they were able to correct the software failure we assume. And so for each time they have a problem, they are

able to fix whatever went wrong and make it even more resilient. The name of the lander was resiliency. And that is the motto here is that you keep on going, you keep on being resilient with the lessons learned. Unfortunately, it's very hard lessons. Now, Laura, while we actually have you, obviously this was a Japanese based company, iSpace, and it was a private company going into space. The other big story going on at the moment is the big falling out between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. And Elon Musk has posted on X, in light of the president's statement about the cancellation of my government contracts, SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately. What might the impact of that be? Well I don't expect

that this blowout should be taken at face value. It is very unlikely given the contracts that SpaceX has that they will be able to decommission Dragon immediately. Dragon is expected to launch in just a few days with a private astronaut mission. So outside of governments, private companies use this spacecraft as well. But generally, the entire Western world relies on SpaceX Dragon. So we should expect that there will be a lot of voices in the US government, including the national security side of the US government in addition to NASA, in addition to private customers that will fight against SpaceX taking action to decommission

Dragon or stop President Donald Trump from removing contracts from SpaceX. Astrophysicist Laura Forsyck of the spaceancy, Astrolitical. An estimated 40 million people around the world live with the HIV virus that can lead to AIDS. To suppress it and avoid developing symptoms, many people take medication for the rest of their lives. But hundreds of thousands of people still die from AIDS-related conditions every year, either because they didn't know they had HIV or they started treatment too late. And so the search for a cure goes on. Now though, there's an encouraging development – a new study published in the journal Nature Communications. It's shown a way to make the HIV virus more visible, so it can't

hide in the body's white blood cells. So how did they do that? James Menendez spoke to Dr Paula Seval, a research fellow at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne and joint lead author of the study. We've been using technology that has recently become a bit more famous as it's been used in the COVID-19 vaccines and it uses something called mRNA. And mRNA is essentially like a recipe in that it provides instructions for the body to make something. And that something could be either a vaccine, but in our case we've instructed it to design and make something different. And that other bit that we've designed the mRNA to make

is our drug and that drug will then reveal where HIV is hiding in the body. And you've also found a way to get that mRNA into those white blood cells. That's quite important isn't it? Correct. That's very important. It's like the mailman, like the delivery service without whom that mRNA is not going to do anything and we know that this technology, the mailman technology, has also been developed before and people have used it before. But the specific cell type that we needed to deliver it to, which is this white blood cell that HIV virus infects, that has been a very difficult address to

deliver things to. And that's where the major breakthrough has been, in that we're now able to do that in a much better and more strong potent way. Can I ask you this? Why does HIV conceal itself in this way? I mean, is it part of the virus's survival technique? It is. It's something that several other viruses do as well. One important example is herpes virus, where you can get a cold sore every now and then that tends to come back. But the virus is there all along. So this is not something unique to HIV, but it does pose a huge challenge to us medical people or scientists

because that is the bit that we need to eliminate. If we ever want to design a cure to HIV, where people can stop taking their medications and still live an HRV free life. Yes, if you can see the virus, how does that then help you go after it? Look, I think it's easy to understand that if something is not visible, it's very difficult to target it. And so we need to be able to discriminate which are the cells that have HRV versus the cells that don't have HRV because we don't want to target them right because that would result in a lot of unwanted toxicities

as a consequence of the treatment. So when we can see which cells have the virus you could either design additional therapeutics that would then go after those cells or we can actually rely on our own immune system, who is actually very good at recognising diseased cells from healthy cells. And we even come up with therapeutics that would help your immune system do that. So all of those things are not part of the current study, but things that the world and us are looking into very much. Right, so that's the next step. I mean, it sounds like a long process still. Absolutely a very long process to go. Also because the current study was only done with cells

donated by people with HRV, but we used those cells in a lab setting. So we haven't yet proven that this technology is also able to deliver the mRNA to the right cells in an actual body. But the current results that we got in that lab are so exciting that we're still very much keen to present this to the world as something that may one day help people with HIV. And I think when you saw the initial results from the lab, I mean, you were pretty taken aback, weren't you? We were, yeah. And I think it's important to know that we were excited in terms of what possibilities it may open in terms of finding the TKRIV, which is our first and foremost goal and purpose. But we also immediately realized the potential applications of this innovation in other areas of diseases.

And that means that outside of HIV, there are other diseases that involve the same cell type. And so if we can deliver mRNA to this specific cell type, that may also help a whole range of other diseases. And we immediately saw that opportunity and we're immediately excited by that. Dr Paula Seval in Melbourne. Now let's talk gaming. Nintendo's long-awaited Switch 2 gaming console has been released worldwide. Many stores opened early on Thursday with eager fans queuing to be among the first to get their hands on one. Switch 2 is the first major console launch in five years. It comes with about 25 games.

One of the big newcomers is Mario Kart World. Sales of the original Switch topped 150 million consoles. These people queued on London's Oxford Street to pick up their new console. It's just an exciting moment. Honestly it just feels like something historic because who knows when we'll get another one. I've had every console since the very first one. Having a new console, it's really exciting. I need to pick up my Switch too, don't I? I've been waiting forever.

Everyone loves Nintendo. I don't know a single person that you go, that you go, oh, I've got Mario Kart. Do you want to play? No one's going to go no. Even your nan's going to say, yeah, go on, let's play Mario Kart. So what's it like? Mark Lowen spoke to Tom Gerken from the BBC's tech team. I think it's a really impressive bit of kit. What Nintendo have done is they've looked at the original Switch,

which is one of the best selling consoles ever made, and they've gone, let's just try and make this a bit better in lots of different ways. They've never done a numbered sequel before. It's the first time ever there's been a Nintendo console with a 2 after it. So that's how similar it is to the original, but with so much more power. The screen is so much more vibrant, the controllers are more comfortable. Rather than them sliding off they now connect via magnets which is nicer. It all feels better in the hand than the original does. Now you would expect it to because it's quite a bit more expensive than the original but it feels great and it looks very very good when it's in your hands. I was going to ask you about the price tag because I understand that it's 50% higher

than the price of the original Switch when it launched in 2017. But that doesn't seem to be dissuading excited buyers. No, and I think that the initial phase of it was always going to be quite good for Nintendo because of course right away you're going to have the big Nintendo fans, the big gamers, that must account for millions of people around the world, no question there. So they're going to get millions of sales right away. I'm fairly confident of that. The thing is, the original Switch hold 150 million units. Now you can't sell 150 million consoles just to the super fans. When you get to that number number it's because families

with multiple children, all the kids have got one. It's because the parents get one for themselves. That's how you get to those kinds of numbers. And I think that's where the tension is going to be with the price. Because it's one thing saying at Christmas time it's $500 or so to get a Switch for each of your kids. It's another thing to say it's closer to $1,000 to do that. I think that's where the tension is going to be for Nintendo. What is the massive attraction of this console? Nintendo publishes and develops its own games, right, as well as its hardware. So when you have a PlayStation, there are some exclusives on the PlayStation, similar for an Xbox,

but those are a few and far between. Now there's some great games there, don't get me wrong, but oftentimes you'll have the same game that works on both consoles. Resident Evil will be on both, FIFA will be on both. With the Switch, this is where you get the unique nature of Nintendo's games. Pokemon, Zelda, Mario, Mario Kart, Metroid. I could do a very long list for you here of games that you can exclusively play if you own Nintendo's consoles. And that means it's always going to have a massive advantage. Those games I just mentioned aren't small fry. They're some of the best selling games that exist.

Pokemon is perhaps the biggest media franchise in the world and that's exclusively on Nintendo's devices. So obviously in that world, people are always going to be drawn towards buying Nintendo's consoles. If you want to play the new Mario Kart game, you have to buy Nintendo Switch 2. It's as simple as that. And I gather you can now play it with 24 other people, Mario Kart on the Switch 2. So it offers possibilities for a lot of gamers to play together. Yes, I actually did that. When I went to an event in Paris ahead of a Switch, who's launched a couple of months ago,

myself and several other people there were playing this knockout tournament, all 24 of us, and the winner stays on effectively. But I did quite well, very fun game mode, and I think Nintendo are trying to find new ways of doing that. And by the way, they have to, because Mario Kart World is by far and away the most expensive Mario Kart game ever made for consumers. It's £75 for a retail version of the way, they have to, because Mario Kart World is by far and away the most expensive Mario Kart game ever made for consumers.

It's £75 for a retail version of the game, which is a heck of a load of money for a physical copy of the game. And so they have to have lots of new figures, I think, to justify that. Tom Gerken from the BBC's tech team, a man who really loves his job. And that's it from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you would like to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, do please send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service, just use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Charlotte Hadroy-Toszimsk,

the producers were Liam McShepard and Stephen Jensen. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard and until next time, goodbye.