Trump says he’ll ‘take a look’ at deporting Musk as feud reaches new peak | EUROtoday

President Donald Trump has steered that the nation’s immigration enforcement equipment could possibly be turned in opposition to now-former ally Elon Musk after the Tesla govt renewed criticism of the tax and spending megabill on which the president has wager his legislative agenda.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday as he departed the White House to go to an immigration detention facility in Florida, the president was requested if Musk, a naturalized American citizen who initially hails from South Africa, could possibly be deported in retaliation for his assaults on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act underneath debate within the Senate.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “We’ll have to take a look.”

The president added that the administration would possibly flip the quasi-agency as soon as run by Musk, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, on his ex-friend.

“We might have to put DOGE on Elon,” he stated. “You know what DOGE is? DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon.”

Musk spent the primary few months of the president’s second time period as an unpaid particular authorities worker main what was initially described as a cost-cutting effort that spiraled into working extra as a roving band of ideological enforcers who at one level fed the nation’s complete overseas assist equipment — the U.S. Agency for International Development — into what Musk known as a “wood chipper” in a span of days.

DOGE’s efforts led to the company largely shutting down, and Musk left the White House in May after being denied a request to stay in that unpaid standing for longer.

Since returning to the non-public sector, Musk has turn into a vocal critic of the partisan spending bundle Trump has touted as a automobile to fund his anti-immigrant agenda and different GOP priorities with out making use of the common appropriations course of that might ordinarily require buy-in from Democrats, significantly within the Senate.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has been lashing out on X, the social media platform he owns, to amplify critics of the huge spending invoice and threaten to help electoral challenges in opposition to lawmakers who vote for the laws on account of the invoice’s damaging impression on America’s nationwide debt.

Trump has claimed that Musk’s opposition to the invoice is pushed solely by pique over the administration’s efforts to remove tax incentives supposed to advertise gross sales of electrical autos corresponding to those offered by Tesla.

Echoing a put up on Truth Social during which he claimed Musk receives “more subsidy than any human being in history” and steered that the centibillionaire “would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa” with out federal help, Trump repeated his declare that Musk is motivated by his personal monetary wants quite than considerations about debt and threatened as soon as extra to punish his former ally financially.

“He’s upset … that he’s losing his EV mandate … he’s very upset about things,” Trump stated. “But you know, he could lose a lot more than that. I should tell you, right? Elon can lose a lot more than that,” he stated.

For his half, Musk has declined to reply on to the president’s threats to this point. But in reply on X to a put up highlighting the video of the president threatening deportation, he steered that he might accomplish that sooner or later.

“So tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting. But I will refrain for now,” he stated.