Americast: Trump vs Elon Musk

Newscast

BBC

Politics, News

4.4 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How did one of the most powerful alliances in American politics blow up? The falling out between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has been playing out very publicly on social media, with back and forth insults and threats. Sarah Smith, Marianna Spring, Justin Webb and Anthony Zurcher unpack how the row intensified with Trump threatening to revoke Musk’s government contracts and Musk claiming, without evidence, that Trump appeared in the unreleased Epstein files. Musk also suggested that Trump should be impeached. But why does a row between the world’s richest person and one of the most powerful, the US president, matter to America and the rest of the world? And what impact could it have on the 2026 midterms?

HOSTS: * Justin Webb, Radio 4 presenter * Sarah Smith, North America Editor * Anthony Zurcher, North America Correspondent * Marianna Spring, Social Media Investigations Senior Correspondent

GET IN TOUCH: * Join our online community: https://discord.gg/qSrxqNcmRB * Send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp to +44 330 123 9480 * Email [email protected] * Or use #Americast

This episode was made by Purvee Pattni, Alix Picikles, Rufus Gray, Grace Reeve and Tom Gillett. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. The series producer is Purvee Pattni. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.

If you want to be notified every time we publish a new episode, please subscribe to us on BBC Sounds by hitting the subscribe button on the app.

You can now listen to Americast on a smart speaker. If you want to listen, just say "Ask BBC Sounds to play Americast”. It works on most smart speakers.

US Election Unspun: Sign up for Anthony’s BBC newsletter: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68093155

Americast is part of the BBC News Podcasts family of podcasts. The team that makes Americast also makes lots of other podcasts, including Newscast and Ukrainecast. If you enjoy Americast (and if you're reading this then you hopefully do), then we think that you will enjoy some of our other pods too. See links below.

Newscast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/p05299nl Ukrainecast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0bqztzm

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, the richest man in the world and the most powerful man in the world have had a massive, very public falling out that has played out in the Oval Office on two different social media networks, kind of everywhere.
0:12.7	So here is a special episode from our podcast and Cousins AmeriCast about the breakdown of the relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
0:23.1	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:27.0	How did it go from this?
0:28.8	A star is born, Elon.
0:31.7	We had one president who couldn't climb a flight of stairs, and another who was fist pumping after getting shot.
0:40.6	To this.
0:41.8	He knew every aspect of this bill.
0:43.9	He knew it better than almost anybody,
0:46.1	and he never had a problem until right after he left.
0:49.2	And he hasn't said bad about me personally,
0:51.2	but I'm sure that'll be next.
0:52.8	But I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've
0:55.2	helped Elon a lot. As Elon Musk and Donald Trump's breakup is playing out very publicly all across
1:01.4	social media, we'll ask, was it always inevitable? And why does this bust up really matter? Welcome to
1:07.6	AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News.
1:13.9	You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.
1:16.7	You're gambling with World War III.
1:18.9	President Trump's message is very simple.
1:20.9	We are done being taken advantage of.
1:22.8	Mr. President, in the name of our God, have mercy upon the people.
1:27.0	We're scared now.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.