This week, president Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s bad blood burst into public view — but apparently, it had been brewing behind the scenes for some time.

In a massive exposé looking behind the curtain of the year’s biggest breakup, the New York Times revealed that the pair was already squabbling immediately after Musk’s now-infamous farewell party — yes, the one that Musk showed up to with a mysterious black eye and a bizarre excuse.

According to White House insiders who requested that the NYT keep them anonymous, Trump learned just ahead of Musk’s now-infamous final Oval Office meeting last week that aviator Jared Isaacman, the billionaire’s pick to lead NASA, had in recent years been a big-time donor to Democrats.

Though many donations are public and easily accessible on databases like OpenSecrets, the information in that file was apparently news to the president. After playing nice during Musk’s televised farewell, Trump apparently made his displeasure with the situation known.

During the confrontation, Trump read the names out loud — which names, we don’t know, because the NYT didn’t reveal them — while reportingly shaking his head. This wasn’t good, he told Musk.

Attempting to defend his pick, Musk insisted that Isaacman’s donations could be spun positively as proof that Trump, himself a former registered Democrat, was willing to hire people from different political backgrounds.

The president, however, wasn’t buying it, and suggested it showed only that the well-heeled SpaceX customer was a turncoat.

Isaacman’s nomination was ultimately rescinded after that tense exchange at the end of May. And according to the NYT‘s unnamed insiders, that debacle was the tipping point that took his increasing frustrations with the president to nuclear levels. Within just a few days, Musk began posting about the “abomination” that he consider’s Trump’s 2025 budget and tax proposal to be — and added in an apparent pedophilia allegation for good measure.

The president, to his end, responded publicly to Musk’s barbs the only way he knows how: with cruelty and aplomb. Along with threatening to cancel SpaceX’s NASA contracts, Trump allegedly, per more reporting from the New York Times, decided to sell the cherry-red Tesla he purchased in March “as a show of support and confidence” for Musk.

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