Well, it finally happened. This town wasn’t big enough for the two towering egos of billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, and now they’re duking it out publicly, albeit from their own separate corners of the web.

Musk is taking to his own social media platform, X, to take jabs at Trump, and Trump is firing back on Truth Social and Fox News. 

The squabble comes a few days after Musk stepped down from leading DOGE, and after Musk repeatedly disparaged Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” a spending package that House Republicans passed in May. Musk has called the bill “a disgusting abomination,” saying it would significantly increase the federal budget deficit by up to $3.8 trillion in additional debt over the next decade through increased defense spending, immigration enforcement measures, and tax cuts. 

In a Bloomberg interview Wednesday night in downtown San Francisco, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai pushed back against concerns that AI could eventually make half the company’s 180,000-person workforce redundant. Instead, Pichai stressed the company’s commitment to growth through at least next year.

“I expect we will grow from our current engineering phase even into next year, because it allows us to do more,” Pichai said, adding that AI is making engineers more productive by eliminating tedious tasks and enabling them to focus on more impactful work. Rather than replacing workers, he referred to AI as “an accelerator” that will drive new product development, thereby creating demand for more employees.

Alphabet has staged numerous layoffs in recent years, though so far, cuts in 2025 appear to be more targeted than in previous years. It reportedly parted ways with less than 100 people in Google’s cloud division earlier this year and, more recently, hundreds more in its platforms and devices unit. In 2024 and 2023, the cuts were far more severe, with 12,000 people dropped from the company in 2023 and at least another 1,000 employees laid off last year.

Looking forward, Pichai pointed to Alphabet’s expanding ventures like Waymo autonomous vehicles, quantum computing initiatives, and YouTube’s explosive growth as evidence of innovation opportunities that continually bubble up. He noted YouTube’s scale in India alone, with 100 million channels and 15,000 channels boasting over one million subscribers.

At one point, Pichai said trying to think too far ahead is “pointless.” But he also acknowledged the legitimacy of fears about job displacement, saying when asked about Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s recent comments that AI could erode half of entry-level white collar jobs within five years, “I respect that . . .I think it’s important to voice those concerns and debate them.”

As the interview wrapped up, Pichai was asked about the limits of AI, and whether it’s possible that the world might never achieve artificial general intelligence, meaning AI that’s as smart as humans at everything. He quickly paused before answering. “There’s a lot of forward progress ahead with the paths we are on, not only the set of ideas we are working on today, [but] some of the newer ideas we are experimenting with,” he said.

“I’m very optimistic on seeing a lot of progress. But you know,” he added, “you’ve always had these technology curves where you may hit a temporary plateau. So are we currently on an absolute path to AGI? I don’t think anyone can say for sure.”

Elon Musk spent the last several months knee deep in government, sidelining his companies to pursue a longstanding Republican quest to weed out alleged waste and fraud. 

Then, a few weeks ago, House Republicans passed a bill with provisions that would kneecap Tesla. 

Now, Musk is fuming that the bill is “a disgusting abomination.”

Plenty has been written about Musk’s motivations for cozying up to President Donald Trump; for spending 130 days as a special government employee; for spending time away from Tesla, the main source of his wealth. Whatever his reasons, Musk did come away with some wins: He managed to secure some free advertising for Tesla, and Starlink is slowly embedding itself into the federal government.

But his time roaming the halls of power and standing alongside the president haven’t exempted Tesla from Republicans’ desire to sink clean energy and electric vehicles.

On Tuesday, Musk let loose. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” he wrote on X. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.

“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

The Congressional Budget Office has yet to score the bill and its impact on the deficit, but this week the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit organization, estimated that the legislation would add $3 trillion in debt.

Musk might be publicly denouncing the reconciliation bill for its inability to rein in federal deficits — there’s no reason to think he doesn’t believe its a problem — but it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t feel personally slighted by the legislation. 

An Axios report backs up that take on the situation, saying that Musk was “frustrated at failing to win favorable treatment in the bill and the administration at large.”

“Elon was butthurt,” a source with knowledge of Musk’s feelings told Axios.

It’s not just Musk’s feelings that could be bruised: His fortune could be dented if provisions hostile to Tesla survive the Senate.

Tesla’s biggest hit would come from revisions to the EV tax credit. Today, consumers who buy an eligible EV can claim up to $7,500, a provision that runs through 2032. Republicans want to end it in 2026 and reinstate the per-manufacturer cap of 200,000 vehicles. The cap almost feels targeted at Tesla, since the automaker was among the first to exceed that figure.

But Republicans didn’t stop there. They also took a hammer to clean energy, severely constraining the ability of rooftop solar installations to qualify for 30% tax credits. If passed, the changes would undercut Tesla’s energy division, which recently has grown 67% year-over-year. The business line has already been threatened by Trump’s tariffs, which “will have a relatively larger impact on our energy generation and storage business compared to our automotive business,” Tesla said in its quarterly report.

In a parting shot, the White House announced Saturday, the day after Musk’s departure, that it was pulling Jared Isaacman’s nomination to be NASA administrator, something Musk had championed.

Welcome to politics, Elon.