Trump vs Musk: behind the scenes at the big bad billionaire bro battle

When the world's most powerful man fell out with the world's richest man, it was always going to be loud and ugly. watched, with a large bowl of popcorn

- Giles Whittell

When Germany's new chancellor flew to Washington last week he was concerned he might be ambushed in the White House as Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa had been before him.

He needn't have worried. On Thursday, for 13 minutes, Donald Trump and Chancellor Friedrich Merz talked about trade and world affairs in the Oval Office. Then Trump was asked about Elon Musk, and it was as if nothing else mattered. The big bust-up was out in the open on the most famous stage in politics.

Two days earlier (four after leaving Washington with a black eye), Musk had blown up online on the subject of Trump's $4.16tn budget bill. He called it an outrageous, pork-filled abomination of which Congress should be ashamed. At the time Trump hadn't risen to the bait; now he did.

"I'm very disappointed in Elon," he said of the man who once said he loved Trump as much as a heterosexual man could. "I've helped Elon a lot."

Wherever he was, Musk was watching. He'd known all along what was in the bill, Trump said. He had only become upset when he found it didn't include billions in federal credits for electric cars like those Tesla sells.

What followed was a wild 80-minute artillery exchange between the world's two most powerful billionaires, each firing from his own messaging platform, and a long night of wondering what it all might mean for Musk, Trump, the US and the world.

Republican grandees implored the pair to "hug" and make up. Vice-President JD Vance, his loyalties apparently torn between the two, was silent for eight hours. Musk's father, traced to a Delhi airport lounge, urged his son to "make sure this fizzles out". That feels unlikely.