President Donald Trump's relationship with tech billionaire Elon Musk is crumbling as the latter continues to step up his attacks on the president's "big, beautiful bill," reported the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday evening.

"A senior White House official said Trump wasn’t happy about Musk’s decision to lambaste his signature legislation, describing the president as confused as to why the Tesla chief executive decided to ratchet up his criticism after working so closely with the president for four months," reported Brian Schwartz, Natalie Andrews, and Olivia Beavers. "The official said senior Trump advisers were caught off guard by Musk’s latest offensive."

Trump and Musk were exceptionally close after Musk put in millions of dollars to get him elected and effectively ran large parts of his critical campaign operations in 2024. Musk then went on to informally head Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force that purged the civil service and froze funding to several federal contracts. In some cases, Musk had massive input over the GOP's spending bills.

But the tech billionaire has become completely disillusioned by the GOP's bill to extend the Trump tax cuts while cutting $1 trillion from Medicaid, food stamps, and green energy subsidies. Frustrated that the bill increases the federal deficit, Musk has publicly called it "disgusting" and is now outright urging people on his X platform to call members of Congress to oppose it.

Trump, who has until now avoided confrontations with Musk over the issue, is running out of patience, the Journal reported.

But the legislation, termed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in negotiations, is not the only source of friction between Trump and Musk, said the report: another conflict stems from Trump's decision to axe the NASA administrator nomination of Musk ally Jared Isaacman, a billionaire financial transactions entrepreneur and the first private astronaut to carry out a spacewalk.