The dispute between US President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who recently left the administration and the DOGE service he runs, has escalated, with the two attacking each other on social media, and shares of Musk's company "Tesla" have collapsed. The US president and the richest man in the world are exchanging threats, and the tension between them has already affected the economic markets.
The tension escalates in hours
It all started with a confrontation over a bill being considered in Congress. It provides for serious tax breaks that economists say will increase the US national debt by trillions over the next ten years.
Musk is a staunch opponent of the law and called it "disgusting". Trump responded by commenting that he was "very disappointed" with the billionaire, who was one of his closest advisors until recently and spent over $250 million on his campaign. Now Musk has said that without him, Trump would hardly have won the election.
The dispute between the two has spilled over to social media. Musk wrote that Donald Trump's name was present in the documents in the case against the late millionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of sexual assault against minors and accused of human trafficking before dying in prison in 2019, where, according to the expert, he committed suicide.
Tesla lost billions
Trump, in turn, responded that Musk was "crazy" and raised the idea of ending government funding for his companies. "The easiest way to save money from our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to end government subsidies and contracts with Elon. I've always been surprised that Biden didn't do it!", the American president wrote on his social network Truth Social.
Tesla shares fell by 15 percent and thus over 152 billion dollars of the company's market value was wiped out.