Trump threatens Musk with deportation amid ongoing feud

WASHINGTON -- US President Donald Trump said Tuesday the White House will have to examine the possibility of deporting Elon Musk, after the billionaire entrepreneur blasted the president's tax and spending bill.

Musk, who originally hails from South Africa and is now a US citizen, posted several posts of criticism over the weekend on social media aimed at Trump's "big, beautiful bill."

The tech titan lambasted the bill for what he said was adding to the US debt.

Trump jabbed back on Tuesday, posting on social media that Musk, who is the CEO of electric vehicle company Tesla, was upset that the legislation eliminated tax credits for electric vehicles.

This is the latest in a row between the two billionaires, with the two in a tit-for-tat war of words.

Trump's sweeping bill, which passed the Senate on Tuesday, includes increased spending for defense, energy production and border security.

Trump has implied that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the organization that Musk helped create in a bid to cut government costs, could be weaponized against Musk's companies.

"Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far," Trump posted on social media. "Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this?"

Trump has also threatened to get rid of government subsidies that provide benefits to Musk's companies.

Musk vowed to punish Republican lawmakers who supported Trump's bill.

"We won't know for some time if Musk follows through on his threats against Republicans. That could take the form of funding primary challengers, helping run independent candidates in red states as campaigns, or something else," Christopher Galdieri, a political science professor at Saint Anselm College in the northeastern state of New Hampshire, told Xinhua.

Clay Ramsay, a researcher at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, told Xinhua that Musk's relationship with Trump went in several stages.

"In the first stage, Musk was willing to spend something like 250 million (US dollars) on Trump's campaign, and Trump liked that," Ramsay said.

"In the second stage, Musk was Trump's partner in creating DOGE, which functioned something like a fourth branch of government, finding ways to stop spending on items that had been passed by Congress and were required by law. In the third stage, the popular dislike of DOGE resulted in a collapse of Tesla car sales, something which Musk had not expected," he added.

"In the fourth stage, Musk moved away from direct execution of DOGE's tasks, and as a businessman, found that his companies were in danger of losing valuable support from clean energy subsidies. This, plus his aversion to government debt, explains why he hates the BBB (big beautiful bill)," the researcher concluded.