Multibillionaire and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk's close ties to US President Donald Trump have been described as a "bromance", a glowing friendship between men, but on Thursday evening it became apparent that the feelings had turned into animosity.
The dispute, which began with Musk being critical of a budget proposal that increases the US government's public expenditures, escalated when the tech entrepreneur accused Trump of being involved in the investigation into the sex trafficking scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein.
Deleted posts
On Saturday, Musk's post on his social media platform X was suddenly deleted without any further explanation.
Jan Hallenberg, US expert and emeritus professor of political science at the Swedish Defence University, believes that Musk deleted the post on his own initiative because "he realized he had gone too far".
When he was at his most angry, he was willing to cancel the agreements between his companies and the US government, but if you think about it, it would cost a bit too much for companies like Space X, he says.
He describes the relationship between the US government and Elon Musk's Space X as a mutual dependence.
There are no American rockets that can retrieve astronauts from the ISS space station without Space X, the alternative is to hire from the Russians with the consequence that the US becomes completely dependent on them, he says.
Crawling back
Sources in the White House said after the dispute that they planned a meeting between Trump and Musk, but Trump said he was not interested in this. Jan Hallenberg believes that the meeting will eventually take place.
I think it will take time, they are both very hurt. I would guess that if anyone is going to crawl back first, it will be Musk.
In an interview with NBC News on Saturday, Donald Trump says he has no interest in patching up the relationship with Musk and that it is likely to be over.
I assume so, yes.
