Republicans and supporters of President Donald Trump are finding themselves caught in the middle of an escalating feud between Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk, which spilled into the open this week amid increasingly angrier social media posts by both men.
Trump’s influential deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is the latest to find himself at odds with the SpaceX and Tesla founder. At one point Miller had reportedly been advising Musk on his political donations, but, according to Politico, it’s unclear where their relationship stands right now.
But one thing is clear, Musk has unfollowed Miller on the social media platform X, which Musk owns. That’s according to the X user Big Tech Alert.
The move to unfollow Miller — who is still following Musk — comes after Musk reportedly hired Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, away from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which Musk helped launch earlier this year, to work for him full-time, the Daily Beast reported.
“Everyone is talking about it,” said a former Trump aide to CNN.
As the feud between Musk and her husband plays out, Katie Miller has been walking a fine line—using her X profile to spotlight her new employer while still engaging with posts tied to her husband. Her account now reads like a steady stream of praise for Musk and his companies, complete with a SpaceX rocket as the banner image and a bio that reads, “wife of @stephenm.”
On Friday, her only post was a laughing emoji reply to a meme depicting Stephen Miller as a Home Depot employee, shared in response to reports of immigration raids at the store chain.
And Miller has been vocal this week about defending Trump’s massive budget measure as Musk has posted increasingly more volatile posts directed at Trump, including a shocking one Thursday alleging Trump had ties to convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019.
“Time to drop the really big bomb,” Musk said. “[Trump] is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.”
“Have a nice day, DJT!” he added.
A few minutes later he tossed another loaded volley. “Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.”
Musk began targeting Trump in escalating social media posts after telling CBS News in an interview last week that he was “disappointed” at the high cost of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said.
“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion,” he said.
Miller, along with other top administration officials, has spent much of this week defending Trump’s massive budget measure. “The bill has been public for weeks. All anyone can find inside the bill is a long list of campaign promises kept,” Miller posted on X Friday.
But a list of nonpartisan groups, including the Congressional Budget Office, finds the legislation would add more than $2 trillion, and possibly over $3 trillion, to the national deficit over the next 10 years.
Miller and other Republican lawmakers keep insisting that the bill is what Trump promised during his presidential campaign.
“The reconciliation bill cuts taxes, seals the border and reforms welfare. It is not a spending bill. There is no ‘pork,’” Miller said on X.
“The only ‘new’ spending in the bill is to defend the homeland and deport the illegals — paid for by raising visa fees. All the other provisions? Massive spending cuts. There is no ‘pork’ in the bill. Just campaign promises,” he insisted.
Musk has threatened to help replace every lawmaker who votes or voted for the legislation. The House passed it by a razor-thin margin just before Memorial Day. It’s currently under debate in the Senate. He also called on Americans to call their lawmakers to “kill the bill.”
He said on X this week that, not only would the bill add trillions to the deficit, but it will also saddle Americans with “crushing debt.”
