Trump-Musk spat, SpaceX’s Dragon and travel ban
By Reuters June 6, 2025
Summary
U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to cut off government contracts to Elon Musk’s companies after he suggested the President should be impeached. Elon Musk threatens – and then rolls it back – a decommission of SpaceX’s Dragon – the only U.S. spacecraft capable of sending astronauts to the ISS. And we look at Trump’s travel ban as the administration intensifies its immigration crackdown.
* This pod has been updated to remove references to a potential telephone call between President Trump and Elon Musk. A White House official said on Friday that no phone call between the two men is planned for the day.
This transcript was created using speech recognition software, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript.
Tara Oakes
Today, the gloves are off. Elon Musk and Donald Trump go for the jugular, with the spat slamming Tesla stock and risking an unprecedented shake-up to the U.S. space program.
Sharon Reich Garson
Why the Trump administration is leaving some countries off the travel ban list. It's Friday, June 6th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, every weekday. I'm Sharon Reich Garson in New York.
Tara Oakes
And I'm Tara Oakes in Liverpool. The bromance is over. And a brawl has broken out in real time on television and social media.
Donald Trump
Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will anymore.
Tara Oakes
U.S. President Donald Trump criticizing Elon Musk as the once-close relationship between the world's most powerful man and its richest unraveled publicly. The on-camera comments came after Musk blasted Trump's tax bill earlier in the week as fiscally reckless and a disgusting abomination.
Donald Trump
He knew every aspect of this bill. He knew it better than almost anybody. And he never had a problem until right after he left.
Tara Oakes
The pair then lobbing verbal barbs at each other on their social media platforms, with Trump threatening to cut off government contracts to Musk's companies, and Musk suggesting the U.S. President should be impeached. White House aides have scheduled a call between the two men later today. Our reporter Trevor Hunnicutt is following all the twists and turns.
Trevor Hunnicutt
It was pretty widely predicted kind of both within Trump circles and just kind of the general public that these two big egos could not coexist simultaneously forever. And so there's always been kind of a betting pool in D.C. as to how long this bromance between these two big personalities could last. Senior Republicans and even White House officials have told my colleague Nandita Bose that they find this infuriating and deeply worrying that there's been this split at a time when the Republican party is trying to project unity behind Trump's vision.
Tara Oakes
Musk seems to have taken Trump's threats to cut his government contracts seriously, saying he would begin decommissioning SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft used by NASA. Hours later, however, he appeared to reverse course. Responding to a follower on X urging him and Trump to cool off, Musk wrote, "Good advice. Okay, we won't decommission Dragon." Still Musk's mere threat to abruptly pull its Dragon spacecraft out of service marks an unprecedented outburst from one of NASA's leading commercial partners. Sharon spoke to our Business of Space reporter, Jory Roulette.
Sharon Reich Garson
Musk has many contracts, right, with the government. How dependent is the U.S. on Musk?
Joey Roulette
The United States is extremely dependent on Elon Musk and on his company SpaceX for accessing space and for kind of right now being one of the world's top space powers. SpaceX plays a crucial role in that. And that's with SpaceX's launch business. It's Falcon 9 rocket launches a majority of the Pentagon satellites into space as well as NASA's science payloads into space. NASA picked SpaceX to use Starship to land humans on the moon this decade, although that program is facing changes because of this administration. So Starlink is an incredibly massive satellite constellation that the Pentagon has sought to use as well. And the intelligence community is working with SpaceX to build its own kind of spy constellation that is somewhat similar to the Starlink system as well. So there's a lot of links and dependencies between the U.S. government and SpaceX. SpaceX has won over $22 billion worth of contracts with the U.S. government, about $15 billion of that is at NASA and about the rest is with the Pentagon. So there's a very, very huge interdependency between SpaceX and the U.S. government.
Sharon Reich Garson
Musk and Trump have been trading barbs throughout the day on Thursday. So is it possible to de-escalate at this point or to rewind?
Joey Roulette
Yeah, that's the big question that everyone's really asking right now. And it's, it's really how far is Trump going to go with these threats? I mean, he threatened to basically cancel all contracts from Elon's companies. That would be devastating to SpaceX and that would be extremely unprecedented. So it remains to be seen.
Tara Oakes
The war of words certainly inflicted damage on Tesla. Carmel Crimmins is here with more.
Carmel Crimmins
Investors dumped Tesla stock on Thursday as the back and forth between Trump and Musk got more acrimonious and the electric vehicle maker ended the day down 14% wiping $150 billion off its market value. Now the stock is currently up around 5% in pre-market trading on hopes that that call today between Trump and Musk brings some sort of rapprochement. We'll just have to wait and see how that goes. Continuing this feud is very risky for Musk's business empire. The fear is that U.S. regulators craft rules in a way that could single out Tesla's plans for its driverless cars. With EV sales falling, Musk has reorientated Tesla's future around self-driving robo-taxis, so there's a lot of investor sensitivity out there.
Sharon Reich Garson
The U.S. and China will resume trade talks that both sides hope will resolve a host of issues, including tariffs and critical minerals. Trump and Xi spoke by phone for about an hour and a half.
Donald Trump
We had a really good conversation. By the way, he invited me to China, and I invited him here. We both accepted.
Tara Oakes
An intense Russian missile and drone barrage overnight has killed four people in Kyiv. That's according to Ukrainian officials. The attack comes on the heels of a warning by President Vladimir Putin that the Kremlin would hit back following Ukraine's audacious attacks deep inside Russia earlier this week.
Sharon Reich Garson
The Trump administration is imposing sanctions on four judges presiding over the International Criminal Court. The unprecedented move is retaliation over the arrest warrant issued by the ICC for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a past decision to open a case into alleged war crimes by U.S. troops in Afghanistan. At least 10 Israeli airstrikes have pummeled Beirut's southern suburbs on the eve of a Muslim feast day. Lebanese officials say the attacks violate a ceasefire deal. We told you yesterday about Trump reinstating the U.S. travel ban, preventing citizens from 12 countries from entering the U.S. The ban also limits entry for people from seven countries. Trump says it's needed to protect against foreign terrorists and for national security. It'll be in effect on June 9th, though visas issued before then won't be revoked. Our deputy foreign affairs editor, Humeyra Pamuk, is in Washington.
Humeyra Pamuk
We should keep in mind that the administration has been working on this since coming into office on January 20th. Reuters reported in mid-March one iteration, one draft of this travel ban list, so it's fair to say that this does not come out of nowhere and it really fits into their overall policy, right?
Sharon Reich Garson
How different is this from the ban during Trump's first term?
Humeyra Pamuk
So the number of countries are higher, obviously. The first iteration that we reported in March had 41 countries. This one has close to 20. And so in that sense, it's much more expansive. I think this ban also requires a state of constant negotiation. The president has said there could be some changes, other countries might be added. We can understand that some countries might get off it. We have been hearing from sources that he's opening the door for a permanent period of negotiation. If those negotiations go well, you can get off the list.
Sharon Reich Garson
And are we likely to see any legal challenges?
Humeyra Pamuk
I mean, a lot of scholars that we've spoken to say the ban is likely to face legal challenges. Those lawsuits, they say, probably have an uphill climb because the latest ban contains various exemptions and it cites very specific security concerns with each country. Those lawsuits probably will have an uphill climb.
Tara Oakes
And before the weekend, a recommended listen. How China came to dominate the rare earths' supply chain and what Beijing's dominance, and their export curbs, mean for the rest of the world. That special episode of Reuters World News drops on Saturday morning.
Sharon Reich Garson
For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. We'll be back on Monday with our daily headline show.☀
