The Ben Mulroney Show - Donald Trump and Elon Musk's war of words turns ugly

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Donald Trump and Elon Musk's war of words turns ugly If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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$25,000 for a $25,000 $25,000 for a $25,000 $25,000 for a $25,000 $25,000 for a $25,000 $25,000 for a $25,000 $25,000 for a $25,000 $25,000 for a $25,000 card. Paying your bills could sound like this. Earn rewards for paying your bill in full and on time each month. Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa card. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. I should say welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. It is Friday

and we made it to the end of the week and we were gifted a big beautiful battle over a big beautiful bill yesterday. Elon Musk versus Donald Trump, the richest man in the world versus the most powerful man in the world. This was a fight for the ages. It got scrappy, it got messy, it got personal. I mean this and it was all on social media for all of us to watch in real time. So as you know, a couple of days ago, Elon Musk broke from Donald Trump over supposedly, apparently over the one big, beautiful bill, this big spending bill that is going to help Donald Trump shepherd his vision for America forward.

There's a lot to like in that bill. It's no tips, no tax on tips or tax on overtime, things like that. But there's also apparently a lot of what they call pork, where, you know, all the every every congressman gets to put their little pet projects in there for their area, the area that they represent. And it's just, it's money, that unaccountable money that should be, should be excised given the fact that Donald Trump ran on a policy of finding inefficiencies, finding redundancies, finding waste, trimming that waste

and giving that money back to the taxpayer. And so Elon wasn't happy about that. So he started posting quite rabidly against the one big, beautiful bill. And then things escalated yesterday because Donald Trump was remarkably quiet during all of this. But eventually things started getting a little nastier

with Elon Musk claiming that Trump would have lost the election without his help. He said, without me, Trump would have lost the election. Dems would control the house and the Republicans would be 51 49 in the Senate, such in gratitude. And Donald Trump was asked, in response to a whole barrage of these tweets, to what does he make of Elon Musk lashing out? Remember, he was here for a long time. You saw a man who was very happy when he stood behind the oval desk, and even with the black eye, I said, do you want a little makeup?

We'll get you a little makeup. But he said, no, I don't think so, which is interesting and very nice. He wants to be who he is. So you could make that statement too, I guess. Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we're well anymore. I was surprised because you were here. Everybody in this room practically was here as we had a wonderful send off.

He said wonderful things about me. You couldn't have nicer said the best thing. He's worn the hat. Trump was right about everything. And I am right about the great, big, beautiful bill. So then Trump goes on to say that this sort of schism happens a lot with people who leave the administration. I'll tell you, it's not he's not the first people leave my administration.

And they love us. And then at 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 is 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. Yeah, it's not, it's nothing to do with me. It has something to do with the people who leave. They must be crazy. But then he floats a theory as to why he thinks, well like what's really going on here.

And you know, Elon's upset because we took the evening mandate and EV mandate, which was a lot of money for electric vehicles. And they're having a hard time with the electric vehicles. And they want us to pay billions of dollars in subsidy. And you know, Elon knew this from the beginning. He knew it for a long time ago. I would say, JD, that hasn't changed. That's been right from the beginning. He knew it for a long time ago. That's been in there. That's been, I would say, JD, that hasn't changed. That's been right from the beginning. Mr.

I think Mr. Secretary, that hasn't changed at all, right from the beginning. But I know that it disturbed him. He wanted and rightfully, you know, he recommended somebody from that he I guess knew very well. I'm sure he respected him, but to run NASA, and I didn't think it was appropriate, and he happened to be a Democrat, like totally Democrat, and I say, you know, look, we won. We get certain privileges, and one of the privileges, we don't have to appoint a Democrat.

Well, Elon did not like this one bit, because this is when stuff just went bananas. This is what he tweeted after that time to drop the really big bomb. Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day DJT. Now we'll spend just a second on this because we don't know whether it's true or not. But if there's no way somebody is going to take this and run with it, that's the this

this this is a story that will come out at some point. But the Trump White House responded to that statement, saying this is an unfortunate episode from Elon who is unhappy with the one big beautiful bill because it does not include the policies he wanted. The president focused on passing this historic piece of legislation and making our country great again. So there was the the threat by Trump to remove all of Elon's subsidies for all of his companies. Elon then, including including by the way SpaceX, and Elon then threatened, okay if you're gonna do that,

I'm just gonna decommission all my rockets. And he, and let's see what happens to the space program. And then he called for Trump to be impeached in favor of JD Vance. He predicted that Trump's tariffs were causing a recession. He talked about creating a third political party to govern for the 80% of America that exists in the middle. The gloves were coming way off, way off.

And typically on days where there's some sort of fight inside the Republican Party, you can trust Scott Jennings of CNN to make sense of it. But even he feels like he's being torn apart here. Let's listen. Here's where we are today. We're literally heads are in the garbage can right now. That's the state of everybody I know at the moment. Not going to lie, it's an ugly day. And you know, you hate it when your friends are fighting. I continue to believe that their partnership last year saved America. And I also continue to believe their goals are not mutually exclusive.

Trump needs to pass his agenda, which this bill is his agenda. It's what he ran on. Elon wants to save America from going bankrupt, which they can also do if the Republicans in Congress and everybody works together. All of these things can happen. When fights get personal, though, it means the enemy is advancing. And in this case, it means how the Democrats are laughing and advancing. So hopefully, cooler heads will soon prevail and the president can get his agenda and Elon can convince the Republicans

that the dead is a serious problem. But not going to lie, rough day for the Republicans. Yeah, I think the Democrats are probably going to do well with this, but not nearly as well as if they had their act together on those 80, 20 issues where they pick the side that nobody's on. So they'll take advantage, but they won't optimize it for sure. But I challenge Scott Jennings on just one point, which is that not everything in this bill

is required for Donald Trump to enact his vision for America. A lot of what's in that bill, I think, is accurately described by Elon Musk as waste, as pork, as evidence that the swamp is alive and well, and Donald Trump seems to be comfortable with that. So that to me is the gist of this. I did like, however, I liked when Elon threatened to just decommission his rockets, somebody pointed out that would be the end of NASA, that would be the end of the space program.

And that would also mean that everyone who's up at the space station, we can't get them back. And that we have no way of bringing that space station back when it's time to bring it safely back to Earth. I should point out also, because this is of importance, if you own Tesla stock, the day ended with the stock being down 14%. It lost $150 billion in value. But there are rumors of a phone call to take place today between Elon and Donald Trump.

Trump apparently shot that down though saying he has no interest. My goodness, this is better than any reality TV. The best high-concept sci-fi rig of her own in the universe is back. What the hell? How long was I out? Close airlock seven! Rick! Seth, please let me out.

Rick put you in there for a reason, speed. Mom, just... Get back here! This is for your own good! Rick and Morty, new season, Sundays on Adult Swim. Get back here! This is for your own good!