Trump Threatens to “Terminate” Elon’s Contracts, Musk Alleges Trump Is in the Epstein Files and Calls for Impeachment, All While Tesla Crashes

My goodness what a historic day for posting on the internet. I detailed the Musk-Trump split earlier today over Trump’s Well, We Are All Going to Die Act that will blow out the deficit, and the fight escalated as I wrote that article wondering if it is all kayfabe. The intense level of posting from two of mankind’s most irrevocably broken brains later in the day confirmed my suspicion that “this Elon kerfuffle does seem to be genuine to some degree.” That degree is currently boiling hot as I write this post, as both sides seem all out of fucks to give about the other, so much so that it is making Kanye West sad online.

Folks we’ve got a shooting war now

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— Jacob Weindling (@jakeweindling.bsky.social) June 5, 2025 at 1:16 PM

As is his tradition when someone lands a punch, Musk used the “more mad than I have been in my entire life” cry laughing emoji, and he initially responded to Trump’s suggestion to take his free money away by threatening to strand the astronauts at the International Space Station, tweeting “This just gets better and better 🤣🤣 Go ahead, make my day…”

Perhaps some part of Musk’s brain realized how transparently mad online that last post was, and he brought out the “big bomb,” moving on to post an allegation of something that Gawker first reported in 2015, that Trump is connected to Jeffrey Epstein. Just before speaking with the Fraternal Order of Police, Trump responded by avoiding even acknowledging the Epstein threat, writing, “I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago. This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress. It’s a Record Cut in Expenses, $1.6 Trillion Dollars, and the Biggest Tax Cut ever given. If this Bill doesn’t pass, there will be a 68% Tax Increase, and things far worse than that. I didn’t create this mess, I’m just here to FIX IT. This puts our Country on a Path of Greatness. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

About the same time as this post, Musk circled back to Trump’s threat to take his goodies away, writing “In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.” The Dragon spacecraft is what ferries astronauts to and from the International Space Station, proving that Musk does have some leverage in this fight over Trump. Soon after, Elon added to his bargaining position by coming out in favor of impeaching Trump, while Trump adviser Steve Bannon tried to add to Trump’s leverage by telling the New York Times that Musk “should be deported from the country immediately.”

Elon endorsed impeaching Trump before the Democrats did

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— Jacob Weindling (@jakeweindling.bsky.social) June 5, 2025 at 2:22 PM

It was utterly surreal to spend the day refreshing these two bozos’ timelines on one screen, all while I watched Tesla stock sprint towards the gates of hell on the other. If you thought Tesla stock was pumping the past month because of some fundamental valuation of a car company that doesn’t make money without its carbon credits business, you had a rude awakening today as the real value in the meme stock was exposed and subsequently evaporated. When Tesla announced its cataclysmic first quarter earnings and its stock pumped the same day, that proved that Elon’s proximity to Trump and that week’s reports that self-driving regulations on cars would be lifted were more important to the stock price than the fact that Tesla’s core business lost money in the first quarter.

Tesla stock fell hard today, over 14 percent, while the six other of the “magnificent seven” stocks propping the market up were all up or down within a percentage point or so. DXYZ, a closed-end fund of pre-IPO tech that’s a proxy for SpaceX, closed down 12.65 percent. This is the market speaking loud and clear that it looks at the breakup of Musk and Trump as bad for Musk’s companies that are heavily dependent on federal aid.

FWIW an 18% drop implies a 34% drop for SpaceX (if we assume the rest of DXYZ is performing about the same as the NASDAQ 100 which is basically fair I think)

— George Pearkes (@peark.es) June 5, 2025 at 12:51 PM

As strange as it sounds to say about a company that makes cars for liberals who want to save the environment, being attached at Trump’s hip was by far the best thing for Tesla’s stock price this year. If it had to exist on its own two feet, then the meme stock posing as a car company would be much more vulnerable to the fact its car business lost money in Q1 amidst its fastest sales decline ever. Granted, Tesla stock has never been attached to its fundamental valuation, as its value proposition to the moonbois and moongirls who buy it is that it’s not a car company, but something more special and indescribable than that.

But Musk’s foray into politics shattered that image to a degree, at least among the non-MAGA diehards. Tesla has experienced one of the most rapid and sweeping brand destructions in history, as Elon has alienated his core customer base by aligning himself with their political adversary. This shortcoming could be made up by the fact that his customers’ enemy is very powerful, and as long as Trump and Elon were besties, you could buy the Tesla meme coin knowing that the federal government was willing to try to sell his shitty cars on the White House lawn if things got desperate enough.

The problem now for Tesla is that not only can its memevestors not depend on the federal government to bail it out whenever Elon asks, but the man helming the federal government is now openly threatening Elon’s $38 billion in business subsidies and Musk is daring him to do something about it. This Musk-Trump split is definitely taking place, and while this new development makes up just one afternoon of rage-posting so far, one of the few certainties you can say right now is that Musk’s companies are bearing the brunt of it.

everything is securities fraud www.bloomberg.com/news/article…

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— Matt Levine (@matt-levine.bsky.social) June 5, 2025 at 2:26 PM