Elon Musk, the South African-born tech billionaire has had his first public disagreement with US president Donald Trump, since leaving the government abruptly last week.
Elon Musk, the South African-born tech billionaire has had his first public disagreement with US president Donald Trump, since leaving the government abruptly last week.
He hit Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” with “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong,” in one of his X posts
However, the White House does not seem too worked up about his comments, as the press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Musk’s stand does not change the president’s opinion about it. “The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn’t change the President’s opinion. This is one big beautiful bill and he is sticking to it,” Leavitt told reporters.
In another series of posts, he also added that the bill would “massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion” and that “Congress is making America bankrupt.”
This is not the first time Musk has spoken against the bill.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk, who recently stepped back from running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), said.
“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion,” he added.
Musk, who is close to the President but appears to remain at odds with him over the issue, made the remarks during an interview with CBS News.
There has been a lot of criticism going around about the bill, with Republican fiscal hawks saying that the country is careening toward bankruptcy, and independent analysts warning it would increase the deficit by as much as $4 trillion over a decade.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers has, however, made hugely ambitious projections, well outside the mainstream consensus, that the package will spur growth of up to 5.2 percent.
Leavitt claimed the bill “does not add to the deficit,” and would actually save $1.6 trillion through spending cuts.
In a Friday press conference, Trump praised the legislation and called the bill “an unbelievable bill” that “cuts your deficits”. He also suggested that he would prefer “a bigger cut in taxes”. Musk who was present in the press conference, did not speak against the topic then.
Per a Politico report, a Republican close to the White House said, “When businessmen criticize legislation, journalists don’t take them at their word, they look at how the legislation would impact their business interests. They should be doing that in this case.