Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven Am.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk and Donald Trump were once political partners, sharing praise,
Speaker 1: power and ice cream parties. Now the pair have been
Speaker 1: trading insults on their own social media networks. In what
Speaker 1: started with Musk's opposition to the President's so called Big
Speaker 1: Beautiful Bill that proposes extensive tax cuts, the feud has
Speaker 1: spilled over into threats that could ground NASA missions and
Speaker 1: blow holes in the US federal budget. Today, Tech and
Speaker 1: power reporter for The Guardian, Nick Robins early on the
Speaker 1: breakup and the dangers of handing critical services to a
Speaker 1: single billionaire. It's Thursday, June twelfth.
Speaker 2: It's sort of Trump derangement syndrome. I guess they call it,
Speaker 2: but we have it with others. Do they leave and
Speaker 2: they wake up in the morning and that Lammer's gone,
Speaker 2: The whole world is different, and they become hustle. I
Speaker 2: don't know what it is. Someday you're right.
Speaker 1: About so, Nick, I thought we should begin at the
Speaker 1: moment that you think that tensions in the relationship between
Speaker 1: Elon Musk and President Trump first became evident.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a bit tough to pinpoint an exact moment,
Speaker 3: but they have been on good terms for a long time.
Speaker 3: Even as he had a lot of conflict with other
Speaker 3: members of the administration, it seemed like Trump would defend
Speaker 3: him and that they would actually kind of keep going
Speaker 3: with their happy friendship. But when things began to fray,
Speaker 3: it seemed as if it was right around the time
Speaker 3: that Musk was on his way out of the administration,
Speaker 3: and there was a few things as he left that
Speaker 3: seemed to start a rift between them.
Speaker 4: President Trump, meanwhile, has withdrawn the nomination of Jared Isaacman
Speaker 4: to be the next NASA administrator. A White House spokesperson
Speaker 4: set a replacement will be announced soon and says the
Speaker 4: next leader of NASA must quote be in complete alignment
Speaker 4: with President Trump's America First agenda.
Speaker 3: One of those things was that his preferred choice for
Speaker 3: the new head of NASA was repealed, and behind the scenes,
Speaker 3: that was something that Musk cared quite a bit about.
Speaker 3: And then when things really got a little bit more
Speaker 3: openly contentious, was the beginning of the spat over Trump's
Speaker 3: Big Beautiful tax bill, as he calls it.
Speaker 4: The tension is mounting over President Trump's Big beautiful bill, as.
Speaker 1: Connor The bill, which would extend Trump's twenty seventeen tax cuts,
Speaker 1: would balloon the deficit two point four trillion dollars over
Speaker 1: the next decade.
Speaker 2: The analysis elon. Musk continues slamming President Trump's budget bill.
Speaker 4: Yesterday, he posted on x calling on members of Congress
Speaker 4: to quote kill the bill.
Speaker 3: The initial bust up came after Musk was giving an
Speaker 3: interview with CBS News and he disparaged the tax bill essentially,
Speaker 3: I think I think a bill can be can be
Speaker 3: can be big, or it can be beautiful.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it could be both my postal opinion.
Speaker 3: He followed that up with some harsher words later calling
Speaker 3: it I think an abomination, and that was the big
Speaker 3: first salvo in this fight. Right after that, Trump was
Speaker 3: having a meeting with the new German Chancellor and he
Speaker 3: was asked about Musk's statements, and he hit back saying
Speaker 3: that he was disappointed in Musk.
Speaker 2: I'm very disapp I've helped ilan a lot.
Speaker 3: He claimed that musk knew everything that was in the
Speaker 3: bill or.
Speaker 2: Everything about it. He had no problem with him. All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, he had a problem, and he only
Speaker 2: developed the problem when he found out that we're going
Speaker 2: to have to cut the ev mentate because it's billions
Speaker 2: and billions of dollars.
Speaker 3: And that he was essentially committing an active betrayal by
Speaker 3: criticizing what was in the bill and the bill's effect
Speaker 3: on the national deficit.
Speaker 1: And as things escalated, we had insults, but then we
Speaker 1: heard actual threats as well, Trump suggesting that he could
Speaker 1: cancel all of Musk's government contracts and subsidies. Can you
Speaker 1: talk to me about that?
Speaker 3: And Musk's response, Yeah. Initially everybody began paying attention because
Speaker 3: they were really going after each other with extremely barbed insults.
Speaker 3: There was Musk insinuating that Trump was affiliated with Free
Speaker 3: Epstein to the point that he was in the Epstein files.
Speaker 3: But it went from that sort of name calling into
Speaker 3: those genuine threats of tangible reprisals. And then Trump fired
Speaker 3: back by saying that he could cancel all of Musk's
Speaker 3: government contracts.
Speaker 2: Oh, we'll take a look at everything and everything. He's
Speaker 2: got a lot of money. It's a lot of subsidy.
Speaker 3: So we'll take a look at that, which would be
Speaker 3: a huge deal for Musk. Musk has extensive contracts through
Speaker 3: SpaceX and his various other companies, and to cancel those
Speaker 3: would be just devastating for Musk's tech empire. Musk then
Speaker 3: shot back by saying that he would decommission SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft,
Speaker 3: which is an incredibly integral spacecraft for NASA and for
Speaker 3: reaching the International Space Station. It would essentially disable the
Speaker 3: US's immediate ability to get anything to and from the
Speaker 3: space station.
Speaker 1: He ended up walking that back, though, what does that
Speaker 1: tell you, Well.
Speaker 3: He did walk it back, and he actually walked it
Speaker 3: back after not that long of a period of time.
Speaker 3: It seems like that that is emblematic of the fact
Speaker 3: that Musk has a lot to lose in this fight.
Speaker 3: It seems like that they are in a period of
Speaker 3: sort of mutually assured destruction in some ways, but in
Speaker 3: other ways. Trump is still the president, He still has
Speaker 3: enormous executive power, and Musk is very very intertwined with
Speaker 3: the government and his businesses are very intertwined with the government.
Speaker 3: After this dust up, Agan, you saw things like Tesla's
Speaker 3: stock begin to plunge because investors thought, well, he's benefited
Speaker 3: from this relationship, and if this goes south, then we
Speaker 3: don't know what will happen. Maybe regulators will begin targeting
Speaker 3: Tesla more. Maybe Tesla will no longer have sort of
Speaker 3: a favorable pride of place in the White House the
Speaker 3: way that Donald Trump was previously acting as a essentially
Speaker 3: car salesman on the White House lawn for them. And
Speaker 3: so I think that his walk back showed that perhaps
Speaker 3: there was hesitation over following through threats that would be
Speaker 3: damaging to his empire.
Speaker 1: Trump, maybe the president, but Elon Musk could derail the
Speaker 1: country's space program. That's after the break, Nick, can we
Speaker 1: talk a bit more about just how interconnected Musk and
Speaker 1: his business empire is with the US government. Tell me
Speaker 1: about I suppose where the relationship starts and how large
Speaker 1: it's become.
Speaker 3: I think it's important to go back a little bit
Speaker 3: before even all of his interconnected work with DOGE and
Speaker 3: him becoming a senior advisor to Trump. You know, he
Speaker 3: obviously donated three hundred million dollars to Trump's reelection campaign efforts.
Speaker 3: But if you walk back further than that, he's been
Speaker 3: intertwined with the government for a really long time, and
Speaker 3: going back to around two thousand and six, two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight, he was already integrating SpaceX into NASA through contracts.
Speaker 3: Over the increased privatization of the US space program, especially
Speaker 3: with SpaceX, he's become intertwined to the point where there
Speaker 3: are now almost two decades later, fifteen billion dollars plus
Speaker 3: in contracts later immense interconnectedness between NASA and SpaceX. SpaceX
Speaker 3: is responsible for so much of NASA's operations and transport missions.
Speaker 3: They're integral to future plans of moon landings and Musk's
Speaker 3: favorite topic of reaching Mars. It's really a sort of
Speaker 3: symbiotic relationship that has evolved, and the US has really
Speaker 3: come to rely on Musk for a ton of different
Speaker 3: satellite communications, space travel, etc.
Speaker 1: Etc. So as these two men feud, then is there
Speaker 1: a risk that the entire US space program could collapse?
Speaker 3: I mean, if Musk was to follow through on threats
Speaker 3: or if this really deteriorates, certainly significant portions of it,
Speaker 3: and definitely plans for the future would really become at risk.
Speaker 3: Had Musk, for instance, decommissioned that Dragon spacecraft, the US
Speaker 3: just wouldn't have had any other immediate means of getting
Speaker 3: to the International Space Station apart from essentially begging Russia
Speaker 3: to help. It just wouldn't have been a a viable
Speaker 3: situation for how NASA could still operate, and if Musk
Speaker 3: was to hold hostage and threaten various other elements of
Speaker 3: the space program, then it would yeah, derail major, major
Speaker 3: plans for the future of space travel in the US.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because, as you say, one way of looking
Speaker 1: at this is to see Trump is the one who
Speaker 1: holds the most power here as the president of the
Speaker 1: United States, but has he in fact handed a lot
Speaker 1: of that power over now to Musk. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that some people that I have talked to
Speaker 3: have described Musk, through Doge and through his company's work
Speaker 3: with the government as just collecting an enormous amount of
Speaker 3: state capture. And since he is running these businesses with
Speaker 3: a certain kind of autocratic flair over what he decides
Speaker 3: to do with them, it means that whenever there is
Speaker 3: some major government program or major government desire to get
Speaker 3: something done, that they are really reliant on his cooperation,
Speaker 3: and that the contracts and the programs that he is
Speaker 3: working on are extremely integral to the US view of
Speaker 3: national defense of space travel of all sorts of services
Speaker 3: that they have essentially privatized over the years to the
Speaker 3: point where now there isn't an internal mechanism or there
Speaker 3: isn't an internal national program that can meet the demand
Speaker 3: and meet the ability of Musk's companies.
Speaker 1: And it's not just US government contracts. You've written about
Speaker 1: how Musk also has had influence on things, including the
Speaker 1: Russia Ukraine War as a result of the infrastructure that
Speaker 1: he owns. So how are governments globally grappling with how
Speaker 1: to deal with the level of power that he holds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that there's been a tendency over the
Speaker 3: past few years, and this is not just Musk, but
Speaker 3: happens with a lot of different tech companies and billionaires.
Speaker 3: They have developed an infrastructure that the whole world now
Speaker 3: relies on, and you've seen that with Musk with his
Speaker 3: Starlink satellite communications. Starlink is now by far the biggest
Speaker 3: satellite communications private company in the world. They have expanded
Speaker 3: and expanded and expanded, and they're being used all over
Speaker 3: the place, but they're most notably being used in Ukraine
Speaker 3: during the Russia Ukraine War, and in two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: Musk essentially refuse to let Ukraine use Starlink in Crimea
Speaker 3: to launch a surprise attack against Russian forces, and since
Speaker 3: then governments have increasingly become aware of and concerned with
Speaker 3: the way that Musk could influenced geopolitics, and so we're
Speaker 3: seeing Europe kind of struggle to find other ways of
Speaker 3: supplanting or providing alternatives to Starlink. There's a bit of
Speaker 3: this scramble right now of governments thinking that if Musk
Speaker 3: is going to be this irrational, erratic international actor, that
Speaker 3: they need to have this sort of plan be in place,
Speaker 3: otherwise they are at his whims and they are liable
Speaker 3: to kind of face reprisals if they don't play by
Speaker 3: his rules.
Speaker 1: What do you think the future is then, of the
Speaker 1: Trump Musk relationship. Do you think that there is any
Speaker 1: sort of genuine friendship there or have we just seen
Speaker 1: the end of what was a temporarily mutually beneficial relationship.
Speaker 3: You know, it's tough to get in anyone's head, but
Speaker 3: especially these two. I think that there are two people
Speaker 3: who are not really known for having a lot of
Speaker 3: close friends or you know, long term relationships that don't
Speaker 3: blow up in dramatic ways. But for over a year
Speaker 3: now they've spoken very effusively about how much they like
Speaker 3: each other. Musk has talked about having ice cream parties
Speaker 3: with Trump in the White House and like enjoying showing
Speaker 3: him rockets, and Trump has called Musca genius and a patriot,
Speaker 3: and it did seem like that for a while. In
Speaker 3: addition to being a very politically mutually beneficial relationship and
Speaker 3: financially mutually beneficial relationship, it was actually one with some
Speaker 3: genuine affection. They're pretty unpredictable people. It's not out of
Speaker 3: the question that six months from now they might be
Speaker 3: sort of chummy again. But obviously there's just so many
Speaker 3: other layers to this that it becomes difficult to predict
Speaker 3: what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: Well, Nick, thank you so much to be your time today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, Australia has joined the UK, Canada,
Speaker 1: New Zealand and Norway in announcing sanctions on two ministers
Speaker 1: in the Israeli government. Foreign Minister Penny Wong has confirmed
Speaker 1: the sanctions applied to Israel's National Security Minister and Finance Minister,
Speaker 1: saying they both have encouraged extremist actions that have led
Speaker 1: to grave human rights violations against Palestinians, and Quantus has
Speaker 1: announced its closing down Jetstar Asia by the end of July,
Speaker 1: following years of financial losses. An estimated five hundred jobs
Speaker 1: will be lost in the closure. However, Quantus says that
Speaker 1: thirteen planes used by Jetstar Asia will be re deployed
Speaker 1: across Australia and New Zealand, creating an additional one hundred jobs.
Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven a m. Thanks for listening.