Trump and Elon's honeymoon is over

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The last day of April in the first year of a US presidential term is always a bit of a milestone.

Today marks 100 days since I took.

After just 100 days, today marks our 100th day of working together.

And that's because the first 100 days tend to go a lot easier than the rest.

The president says he still has 1,300 days to go.

Despite the smiles, his honeymoon is certainly over.

Donald Trump, in his second term of office, managed to stretch the honeymoon period beyond the end of April all the way to the end of May.

Everything seemed to be going really quite well.

He had his best bro, Elon Musk, on his team.

He could seemingly fire anyone he wanted.

Congress seemed happy to rubber stamp anything he put in front of them.

He managed to throw thousands of people into a foreign maximum security prison with little resistance.

And while protests were happening, they didn't seem to be achieving all that much.

But I think in the coming months and years of the second Trump administration, June 2025 will be remembered as the moment everything changed.

Elon Musk suggested without evidence that the president appears in unreleased files relating to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The Doge founder labeling President Trump's signature tax cuts an outrageous and disgusting abomination to the nation's dead.

The Department of Homeland Security released a statement claiming 1,000 rioters had surrounded a federal law enforcement building and assaulted ICE law enforcement officers, slashing tires and effacing buildings.

It happened so suddenly and so fast.

And yet I think understanding this moment is vital.

In a lot of ways, it is setting the scene for the rest of Trump's presidency.

So, for the next two episodes, we're going to take a look at what led to this sudden shift, the summer of discontent, how it started, and what it means for the next few months and years.

I'm Matt Bevan, and this is If You're Listening.

To understand what's happening now, we need to understand how things used to work before the Trump era.

That Sam I am, that Sam I am.

I do not like that Sam I am.

Do you like green eggs and ham?

I do not like them, Sam I am.

I do not like green eggs and ham.

This is Senator Ted Cruz on the floor of the U.S.

Senate in 2013, six hours into a 21-hour filibuster speech.

Would you like them in a house?

Would you like them with a mouse?

I do not like them in a house.

I do not like them with a mouse.

As far as we know, Senator Cruz wasn't speaking with any kind of medical assistance apart from the fact that he had exchanged his traditional Texan ostrich skin cowboy boots for more comfortable runners.

I will embarrassingly admit that I took the coward's way out and so went and purchased some black tennis shoes.

Senator Cruz was reading Dr.

Seuss partially to just kill some time, but he also wound the story around to make a point.

And I'll tell you the the difference with green eggs and ham

is when Americans tried it, they discovered they did not like

green eggs and ham.

They did not like Obamacare either.

They did not like Obamacare in a box with a fox in a house or with a mouse.

He said that his primary problem with Obamacare is that, like other policies, passed by President Obama, it didn't help working families.

The American people are hurting.

This is a difficult time.

Look, the very rich, they're doing fine.

In fact, they're doing better under President Obama than they were before.

But hard-working American families are struggling, and their life has become harder and harder and harder.

And most importantly, it added massively to the already large government debt.

I think we've got a deep spending problem in this country.

that Congress has abdicated its responsibility, has built a record debt.

The speech was part of a long-running campaign by Senator Cruz and a number of other Republican senators and congresspeople to cut back on government spending.

And to understand why Republicans care so much about government spending, you need to understand how debt works.

Every year since 2001, the U.S.

government has spent more money than it has raised in taxes.

That creates a deficit.

In order to pay for that deficit, the U.S.

government borrows money and goes into debt.

The debt is like a mountain of dirt.

Every year that the government runs a deficit, that deficit gets dumped on top of the mountain.

It's gone from $10 trillion when the president was elected to now nearly $17 trillion, over a 60% increase.

And for the purposes of this episode, we're going to accept the premise that debt and deficit are always bad.

That is Ted Cruz's position at least, and that's what he says he went to Washington to fix.

I am very, very happy to compromise to work with anybody.

Democrats, independents, libertarians.

I mean, I've joked, I'll work with Martians.

If they're willing to cut spending.

Well, speaking of Martians.

We certainly need to decrease the amount of government spending.

I think that that's really important.

This is Elon Musk speaking to the Stimson Center think tank right back in 2011.

And it can't be like a little bit here around the edges.

That doesn't count.

There needs to be a meaningful decrease in government spending, such that we do not have trillion-dollar deficits, because that's obviously unsustainable.

Back when he was a smart suit and tie kind of guy, rather than a chainsaw-wielding, allegedly drug-fueled Roman saluting kind of guy, he compared Congress to a kid doing a delayed gratification test where they're offered one cupcake now or three cupcakes if they can avoid eating the first one for 10 minutes.

Some titles they just go and they eat that cupcake and they basically sacrifice tomorrow for today, effectively.

That's kind of like what

Congress

often behaves like.

Musk suggested massive government spending cuts and increasing taxes.

We need to do both.

We can't solve it either by simply increasing taxes or by just cutting deficits.

I mean,

that's like saying, you know, the sky is blue.

I mean, it's so freaking obvious.

So freaking obvious.

Cut spending, raised taxes.

So when the Republican Party took charge of the White House and both houses of Congress in 2017, did they do that?

I'll give you the name.

It's called the Tax Cut, Cut, Cut, Cut Bill of 2017.

That's what it's called.

That seems like the opposite of a tax raise, raise, raise, raise.

Won't that make debt and deficit worse?

How does Ted Cruz feel about those green eggs and ham?

One of the the reasons I am such a passionate advocate for a big, serious tax cut is because I'm very worried about the deficit in debt.

Cruz thinks that by cutting taxes, you can stimulate massive economic growth.

That generates so much revenue that that's how you end up paying down the deficit and debt.

So, this is classic Republican-style economic theory.

This will pay for itself with growth.

The business tax cut side is going to pay for itself.

Give it a couple, three, four, five years.

Does it actually work, though?

Well, the Trump tax cut, cut, cut, cut bill came into effect seven years ago and...

Federal revenues are lower than they would have been if not for the Trump tax cuts.

The Trump tax cuts did not pay for themselves.

I provide documentation in my statement.

I agree they did not pay for themselves and they did not trickle down to employee earnings.

In those seven years, US debt grew from $20 trillion

to $36 trillion, a number that I'm sure Ted Cruz did not like in a box, with a fox, in a house.

Or with a mouse.

Although this is a pretty big jump, an increase in debt isn't particularly surprising.

This sort of fiscal policy is really just how the American government has functioned for about the last 20 years.

Both Republicans and Democrats shout about deficits and debts while the other guys are in power, And then when the tables turn, they don't really do anything to fix the problem.

Government spending is like bankrupting the country.

Our

interest payments on the national debt now exceed the Defense Department budget.

Here's Elon Musk in 2024, having ditched his smart suit and tie for good, speaking to Joe Rogan.

We're on a path to bankruptcy.

America's on a path to bankruptcy.

So we have to cut government spending or we're just going to go bankrupt.

By this time, Elon Musk had already come up with his idea of creating the Department of Government Efficiency and balancing the U.S.

budget, but he was still smoothing out the finer details of exactly how he would achieve that.

Howard Lutnick, who is now the Commerce Secretary, introduced Musk at one of the final Trump campaign rallies before the election.

Madison Square Garden, ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the greatest capitalist in the history of the United States of America, Elon Musk.

Luttnick told the all-in podcast that he'd organized a little skit that the two of them could do together, where Musk would talk about his proposed efficiency cuts and Luttnick would talk about his proposed tariff revenues.

I say to him, how much are you going to cut?

The deal was he's going to cut $1 trillion.

And then he's supposed to say, and how much are you going to earn?

And I'm supposed to say, $1 trillion.

And then we're supposed to say, together, we're going to bounce the budget in United States of America.

That's that's the little sort of thing.

Now, it didn't really go quite as planned.

We set up Doge.

Yes.

How much do we think we can rip out of this wasted $6.5 trillion

Harris Biden budget?

Well, I think we could do at least $2 trillion.

Yeah!

Yes.

Two trillion.

Elon's gone off script.

Did he ask how much are you going to earn?

No!

No, because he said $2 trillion.

I got it all.

Don't worry, Howard.

I got it all.

Don't worry, Howard.

Now, Howard Luttnick put that down to a bit of exuberance from the notoriously excitable Elon Musk.

But

I don't think that's right.

We now know that Musk thought that Trump and Luttnick's entire plan to raise budget revenue with tariffs was illogical.

He seems to have genuinely decided that he would fix the budget deficit single-handedly.

Your money is being wasted, and the Department of Government Deficiency is going to fix that.

How quickly would it be able to fix that?

Well, Trump and Musk were sure it would be pretty quick.

Musk wasn't given an actual job in the government.

He was only given a short-term contract.

I can confirm he's a special government employee.

I can also confirm that he has abided by all applicable federal laws.

Being a special government employee doesn't just mean that he's the president's best, most favourast employee.

It is a legally defined position that someone can only be appointed to for 130 days, like a casual holiday retail job, except you can shut down vital aid programs in Africa.

By the halfway point, Musk was shifting the goalposts a bit for what was achievable by day 130.

I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that timeframe.

$1 trillion?

Okay, so that's half what you said at Madison Square Garden?

Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars.

So from a nominal deficit of $2 trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to $1 trillion.

By day 80, the target had shrunk even further.

I'm excited to announce that we anticipate savings in FY26 from reduction of waste and fraud by $150 billion.

We published an episode earlier this year which looked at why cutting $2 trillion out of the US budget just by trying to increase the efficiency of the government and cutting out waste, fraud and abuse was basically impossible.

This is primarily because an enormous proportion of the government workforce is there to stop waste, fraud and abuse.

You can either save money by firing people, in which case fraud will increase, or you can hire more people to detect fraud, in which case the cost of your payroll will increase.

And anyway, even if you somehow managed to find a way to do both, you wouldn't get close to even $1 trillion in cuts.

Plus, it would take a lot more than 130 days.

Even taking the Doge website's claims at face value, which to be clear, you shouldn't, they're not actually getting anywhere.

Taking only savings that have receipts attached, they're at around $80 billion.

So a bit more than halfway to the drastically reduced target.

Former Trump advisor turned far-right podcaster Steve Bannon, famously not a fan of Elon Musk, says Musk physically pushed Treasury Secretary Scott Besson during an altercation in the White House over Doge's actual progress.

He and Elon got into a physical altercation, and that's because, number one, people felt that day that Elon might have been on drugs.

And number two, Scott called him a fraud to his face and said, Look, we're in the middle of a hard, a terrible budget fight.

You committed to a $2 trillion, then you committed to a trillion dollars.

Now you talk about $160 billion.

You can see why Musk was feeling a bit disheartened by the whole thing and why he didn't seek an extension to his 130-day tenure.

But it doesn't explain the explosive breakup with President Trump.

The reason for that came from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

See, the United States House of Representatives takes a little while to get things done.

They'd been working for the entire first hundred days on a task that Donald Trump had set them.

He'd made it clear that he didn't want to see Congress fighting over lots of little pieces of legislation and often failing to pass anything, just like they had during his first term in office.

Well, I like one big, beautiful bill, and I always have, I always will.

One big, beautiful bill.

That's what the Congressional Republicans were told to work on when Trump met with their leadership at the beginning of the year.

President Trump is going to prefer, as he likes to say, one big, beautiful bill.

The thousand-page One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA,

was revealed to the public for the first time on the 98th day of the Trump administration.

And of course, it was all about cutting spending and raising taxes.

Oh, wait, I'm just hearing...

And now we're going to pass the largest tax cuts in American history.

Oh, well, at least they're not increasing spending.

I'm also pleased to report that the one big beautiful bill will include $25 billion for the Golden Dome to help construction get underway.

That's a missile defense shield, but it's only $25 billion, right?

I'll just check in with one of the senators who is actually working on the project.

It will not be a $25 or $35 billion project.

It will likely cost in the trillions if and when Golden Dome is completed.

Cool.

So overall, this one big beautiful bill is expected to cost an average of $239 billion a year on top of the existing deficit.

Remember that Elon Musk destroyed his reputation and triggered a global boycott against his car company to find maybe $80 billion in savings?

You know, I was like

disappointed to see the massive spending bomb, frankly,

which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the Doge team is doing.

CBS correspondent David Pogue decided that he would rub it in a little bit.

I actually thought that when this big, beautiful bill came along.

I mean, like, everything he's done on Doge gets wiped out in the first year.

I think a bill

can be big or it can be beautiful.

I don't know if it could be both.

This comment was really what turned the eggs in ham green, if you know what I I mean, the moment that the bromance went bad.

The relationship has soured after Mr.

Musk described the president's so-called big, beautiful bill as a disgusting abomination.

And of course, it really just kicked off from there.

I feel like the kids of a bitter divorce where you're just saying,

I really wish mommy and daddy would stop screaming.

Now, a lot of the commentary around the Trump-Musk feud has focused on it being a clash of personalities, or maybe it's about money.

Maybe Musk doesn't like what Trump is doing with his electric vehicle policy or his tariff policy, and he's worried about what that'll do to his car company.

But I actually don't think it's about those things.

Well, not entirely, at least.

Musk and Trump's explosive breakup is actually just another symptom of the long-term rot inside America's political system.

Musk boarded the Trump train thinking that he would genuinely be able to fix this problem.

Some toddlers, they just go and they eat that cupcake.

And they basically sacrifice tomorrow for today, effectively.

That's kind of like what

Congress often behaves like.

He thought that by applying a Silicon Valley-style move-fast and break-things approach to government, he could maybe improve the fiscal situation of the United States.

He would do what Congress was too stupid or too corrupt or too cowardly to do.

He would point his giant rocket-shaped brain at the system and smash through.

He was, it turns out, deeply misguided.

In a way, it's a sign that American institutions are much more resilient than expected.

The Constitution says that Congress can build a mountain of debt as high as they like, and there's nothing that the President and the executive branch can really do about it, even with an allegedly ketamine-fueled rocket brain.

But Musk's failure should teach us a lesson.

For decades, people have been demanding that someone come in and run America like a business.

But if a man Howard Luttnick described as the greatest capitalist in the history of the United States of America can't do it, maybe nobody can.

If you're listening, is written by me, Matt Bevan.

Supervising producer is Cara Jensen-McKinnon.

Audio production is by Cinema Nipart.

The explosion of Elon Musk's government career wasn't the only thing that took 100 days to go off.

We've now seen violence on the streets of America as protesters push back against the Trump administration's immigration policies.

What do the clashes between protesters and police and the deployment of Marines to Los Angeles tell us about the future of the Trump administration's deportation plans?

That story is next on if you're listening.

Hi, Jules and Jez here, and every week on Not Stupid, we unpack the news of the week.

I I like to see when people change their minds because it makes me, just as a normal person, feel like I'm not the only one who exercises a degree of self-doubt every single day.

Self-doubt, it's a fine thing, that's our takeaway today.

You can find Not Stupid on the ABC Listen Up.