Elon Musk escalated his feud with President Trump Monday, announcing that he would throw in with one of the commander in chief’s biggest foes in Congress, Rep. Thomas Massie — the libertarian-leaning House Republican who Trump has vowed to see defeated in next year’s midterm election.
Musk signaled he would donate to the Kentucky Republican’s 2026 reelection campaign on X when he responded “I will” to a post asking who would be backing Massie’s congressional bid.
Trump, meanwhile, had pledged to support whichever candidate runs in the primary against Massie, whom the president lambasted as a “loser” and “Third Rate Congressman” in an online tirade last week.
The president’s allies, including his 2024 campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita and top pollster Tony Fabrizio, launched the Kentucky MAGA super PAC last month in a bid to oust the seven-term incumbent.
Last year, Massie walloped a pair of primary foes, receiving 76% of the vote, and held his deep-red district without facing a Democratic opponent.
Massie, 54, has been vocally opposed to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is Trump’s sweeping domestic policy package, and has slammed last month’s US strikes on Iran as unconstitutional.
The lawmaker, who struts around Congress with a debt clock on his lapel, has opposed every version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act due to his concerns about its impact on the deficit.
Last month, the Kentucky Republican additionally teamed up with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) on a bipartisan war powers resolution to stop the US from getting involved in the Israel-Iran conflict, a move that roiled Trump despite falling flat in the House.
During the first Trump administration, Massie emerged as a top opponent of the $2 trillion coronavirus relief package in March of 2020, which drew the president’s ire at the time.
Despite Trump’s broadsides, Massie has remained defiant, crowing that “I have the Trump antibodies.”
But Trump has been confident that he can take down the seven-term incumbent.
“New poll: Anybody I Endorse beats Thomas Massie of Kentucky by 25 points. Get ready. Massie is a very bad guy!” Trump gloated on Truth Social Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Musk has vowed to bankroll primary challenges to Republicans that supported the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, reviving his beef with Trump.
The fresh war of words between Trump and Musk erupted after the world’s richest man renewed his sharp criticisms of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, calling it “utterly insane” and “political suicide.”
The Tesla boss had raged against the massive spending bill — on which Trump’s major policy agenda hangs — on social media ahead of the Senate vote.
“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!” Musk fumed on X.”And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”
Trump responded with fury Monday night, threatening to unleash DOGE against Musk, the department’s founder and former head, to investigate his companies’ government subsidies.
He also warned his former ally that he may have “to close up shop and head back home to South Africa.”
“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump wrote.
The president and top Republicans in Congress have alleged that Musk turned against them because of their plans to slash green energy subsidies and end the Biden-era mandate for between 25% to 60% of new car sales to be electric vehicles by 2032, depending on the category.
“Now he’s upset that he’s losing his EV mandate. He’s very upset about that. But you know, he could lose a lot more than that,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn Tuesday. “Elon can lose a lot more than that.”
Musk has denied that his crusade against the marquee legislative bundle was motivated by his beef with Biden-era green energy provisions getting axed, though he has whined that the megabill “gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”
At one point, a reporter asked Trump if he was interested in deporting Musk and he said he’d “take a look” at that possibility.
“We’ll have to take a look,” Trump replied. “We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? The monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies.”
The world’s richest man had gone berserk on Trump last month in a dramatic public falling-out.
During his rhetorical rampage, Musk claimed that Trump’s presence in files related to convited pedophile Jeffrey Epstein were preventing their release. Later, the billionaire admitted that “I regret some of my posts about” Trump and deleted the message about Epstein.
Musk’s time as a special government employee wrapped up at the end of May and Trump had given him a chummy Oval Office send-off before tensions exploded between the two former billionaire buddies.
