Musk calls for President Trump's impeachment.
Musk goes Nuclear on Tramp, Calls for his Impeachment
Musk goes Nuclear on Tramp, Calls for his Impeachment
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00The president's biggest campaign donor, who was so close that Trump invited him to sleep at the
00:04White House, is now calling for him to be impeached and replaced by Vice President J.D. Vance.
00:10The man who was handed nearly unfettered access to the federal government is openly musing about
00:15forming his own political party. And the same guy, the billionaire backing the U.S. space program,
00:21he's now threatening to take his rockets and go home. What at this time yesterday was a one-sided
00:26attack on the president's signature spending bill is no longer just a policy disagreement,
00:32not even close. It has now become quite personal, as the president says he thinks he knows why.
00:39Well, look, you know, I've always liked Elon, and I was very surprised. You saw the words he had for
00:44me, the words. And he hasn't said anything about me that's bad. I'd rather have him criticize me
00:49than the bill, because the bill is incredible. It's the biggest cut in the history of our country.
00:55We've never cut. It's about $1.6 trillion in cuts. Elon's upset because we took the EV mandate,
01:03which was a lot of money for electric vehicles. And, you know, they're having a hard time,
01:09the electric vehicles. And they want us to pay billions of dollars in subsidy.
01:15And, you know, Elon knew this from the beginning.
01:19As Trump was speaking from the Oval Office, Elon Musk responded in real time, writing this,
01:25quote, false. This bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of the night so
01:30fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it. And, quote, whatever. Keep the EV solar
01:35incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil and gas subsidies are touched. Very unfair.
01:40But ditch the mountain of disgusting pork in the bill. And with the German chancellor sitting by his
01:45side today with the president there in the Oval, he said what he had been bottling up really for days now.
01:51You saw a man who was very happy when he stood behind the Oval desk. And even with the black eye,
02:00I said, do you want a little makeup? We'll get you a little makeup. But he said, no, I don't think so,
02:05which is interesting. He's worn the hat. Trump was right about everything. And I am right about
02:11the great, big, beautiful bill. We call it a great, big, beautiful bill because that's what it is.
02:16I don't know what it is. It's sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it. But
02:20we have it with others, too. They leave and they wake up in the morning
02:25and the glamour's gone. The whole world is different and they become hostile.
02:31I don't know what it is. Someday you'll write a book about it and you'll let us know.
02:36Not to be outdone. Musk posted in response to that, quote, without me,
02:40Trump would have lost the election. Dems would control the House and Republicans in the Senate
02:44would be 51 to 49. Such ingratitude, he added. As the White House was scrambling to react to all
02:52of this as it was playing out in real time today, with aides now forced to attack the person they
02:57have been defending for months in front of the cameras. Look at this. You can still see the
03:01imprint of Musk on the White House, that red Tesla that the president bought from him.
03:05Our J. McMichael shot this. It was still sitting right outside the West Wing, parked on West Exec.
03:10He's a great patriot and he's also done an incredible job with Tesla. And I mean,
03:19nobody else has a car company started up in the last 30 years. It's been successful. I don't think
03:24so. I love Tesla. It's not clear if he still feels the same way tonight. Today, the president
03:31declared that Elon was wearing thin. I asked him to leave. I took away his EV mandate that forced
03:37everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted, that he knew for months I was going to do,
03:42and he just went crazy.
03:45Then came the threat that could really hurt. The president said the easiest way to save money in
03:50our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and
03:55contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it. Tesla's stock price took a massive hit
04:01after that. $150 billion in market value gone as the two were trading attacks today. According to
04:07Bloomberg, Elon Musk lost $34 billion today. That financial hit, though, does not seem to be
04:13enough for his critics in MAGA World.
04:16This guy is all over the map. He's right. But he's emblematic of these oligarchs. All of them
04:23have the maturity of a nine-year-old, and they're dangerous. They're dangerous not just to the
04:28president of the United States. More importantly, they're dangerous to this republic and the citizens
04:33of this constitutional republic.
04:36At one point, the president seemed to maybe be trying to cool things off. He said, quote,
04:41I don't mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done this months ago.
04:45And I'm told that allies of both the president and Musk were kind of caught in the middle of all
04:49of this today. They were quietly and delicately trying to broker peace between the two men behind
04:54the scenes. But those efforts were upended when Elon Musk wrote this. This was really kind of the
05:00end of that. He said, time to drop the really big bomb. Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.
05:06That is the real reason they have not made public. Have a nice day, DJT.
05:13Now, I should note tonight, there's no evidence when it comes to what this looks like in terms of
05:17the Epstein files beyond that. The White House says his bomb is an unfortunate episode. And several
05:23people familiar with what was happening behind the scenes described the Epstein tweet to me as
05:27the tipping point, though, in this relationship, now fearing that there is no going back.
05:32We have a full house of deeply sourced insiders to start us off on what is a remarkable day at the
05:37White House. CNN's Donio Sullivan and Brian Stelter, and also Politico's Dasha Burns and the Associated
05:42Press's Sungmin Kim. Dasha, I mean, I just want to know what you're hearing from people at the
05:48White House tonight, because what we were hearing is, yes, this was a breakup that was predictable,
05:53but even people inside the White House did not see it going down like this and as fast as it
05:59happened today. I mean, the group chats inside the White House were just on fire today. People
06:04comparing it to a divorce, saying, yeah, we thought it was going to happen, but maybe not
06:08until the fall or in a few months. What have you been hearing from people tonight?
06:13My phone's been just absolutely blowing up. People inside the White House, people on the
06:18Hill. I mean, the divorce analogies are rampant right now. Look, it was the ferocity, how quickly
06:26this happened. And once he started going down the rabbit hole of the Epstein files, that's
06:32when the conversation with the White House allies and people inside of the White House
06:36really changed as I was communicating with folks all day. They were saying this is now
06:42going into crazy town. They were people were telling me that the president is concerned about
06:48Elon Musk's well-being, that you saw the reporting as we all did from the Times around the drug use.
06:55They didn't expect it to go quite in this direction. And at this point, you know, earlier
07:01on, people were saying, look, they fight. These are two titans. They're clashing, but they'll
07:06come back together. Now it seems like the hope for any sort of reconciliation is gone. And
07:13the goal is just to try to turn the temperature down here.
07:17I mean, Sung Min, that's really the question here is how you turn the temperature down when
07:21you have got these two major personalities, two alphas who are trying to essentially outdo
07:29one another in terms of of inflicting harm now that this relationship is for watching
07:35it totally implode.
07:37Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk and Donald Trump hit each other where it hurts the most. They hit
07:43each other's egos. And for Elon Musk, Donald Trump really hit at his wallet. So it's really
07:48difficult to see what the two sides can do to at least even turn the temperature down
07:53a little. But this fight could have really serious actual consequences for President Trump's
07:58agenda. I was really fascinated by some of the early comments we were getting from Republican
08:02lawmakers on Capitol Hill about the impact on that so-called one big, beautiful bill.
08:07I mean, there's Ryan Zinke, Republican from Montana. He was Interior Secretary for President
08:12Trump in his first term. And he said that, you know, you have the richest man in the world
08:18and you have the most powerful man in the world going up against each other. It really does
08:22put it can put the bill in serious jeopardy. And while I'm a little bit skeptical about how
08:29much I was a little skeptical at this point about how much power Elon Musk will have at this
08:34point, I think a lot of his power within the Republican Party comes from his proximity to
08:39Donald Trump. But it certainly doesn't help when the fate of the bill is already very much
08:43teetering on the edge.
08:45Yeah. And Doni, you know, when it comes, it started out just, you know, this policy fight
08:49on what was happening on Capitol Hill. Obviously, anyone who crosses Trump should expect to face
08:54his wrath. It was actually surprising how long he took to respond to Elon Musk. But on the Epstein
08:58files, I think just to properly convey to people who may not be on Twitter as much as you and
09:04I are, it is the lowest of the low insults to say to someone in right-wing media or the
09:11right-wing atmosphere, oh, you're in the Epstein files.
09:14Yes. That really is, you know, that is the kryptonite here. And maybe why Trump finally responded,
09:21right? I mean, when it comes to the Epstein files, Epstein lists, whatever folks want to call
09:27it, it doesn't actually matter what it is in reality. I mean, there have been names that have
09:34been associated with Jeffrey Epstein that have been released through court. Trump's name came out
09:39in documents last year, but there was absolutely no accusation of wrongdoing on Trump's part
09:45whatsoever. But his name was as somebody who knew Epstein. What is most important, though, is what
09:53people in the MAGAverse imagine what this list is to be, right? And this, they imagine, is a list of
10:00all the bad people, all the bad people who went to Epstein's Island and who, you know, abused young
10:06women and did other criminal things. And what people also believe is that that list is made up
10:13of Trump's enemies normally, right? We see there's been many versions of this list that have circulated
10:20online. That's the thing, though. They did this to themselves because it was the Trump orbit that
10:23amplified the conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein's list and who was on it and what it meant
10:28about those people. And so for Elon Musk to say that, that is why that kind of takes this to this
10:34other level. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean that there was wrongdoing. We don't know that.
10:37No. But there's already pictures of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein together. We knew he was a member at
10:41Mar-a-Lago and then was removed from the club. But it was kind of the right turning on the right
10:46here. 100%. And there is going to be a situation now where people have to choose sides, right?
10:51GOP lawmakers are already asking themselves, am I choosing Trump or Musk? I'm sure most of them
10:54will choose Trump.