Elon's Explosion at Trump Appears to Have Cost Him a HUGE Deal

Following the spectacular implosion of billionaire Elon Musk's bromance with president Donald Trump, the consequences of his actions are starting to come into focus.

As Reuters reports, the White House's plans to tap Musk's SpaceX for a "Golden Dome" appear to be on shaky ground now that the two's ugly spat metastasized into a spite-filled mud-flinging contest.

The original plan was to use a satellite constellation — likely SpaceX's — to monitor for adversarial activity and work with drone manufacturer Anduril to build an anti-missile defense system.

However, sources now tell Reuters that the White House could abandon SpaceX and focus on existing ground systems for missile defense instead.

"Because of the blowup, the Pentagon has been given the space to look at other alternatives," one of the agency's sources said.

A White House spokesman told Reuters that the "Trump Administration is committed to a rigorous review process for all bids and contracts."

Losing the Golden Dome contract, a defense system valued by experts as a whopping $175 billion total, could be a major setback for Musk's space firm.

Last week, following a dramatic escalation in their feud, Trump warned Musk that the "easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts."

It was a considerable threat, considering Musk's empire has been built on tens of billions of dollars' worth of government contracts. As the Washington Post found earlier this year, NASA and Defense Department contracts awarded to SpaceX make up the bulk of the $38 billion Musk's businesses have received over the last two decades.

Days later, Musk struck a wildly different tone, confessing that attacks on Trump had gone "too far" and saying that he regretted "some of my posts."

With the missile defense shield project seemingly teetering on the edge of a spite-fuelled tussle, experts aren't too optimistic about the Golden Dome's long-term viability.

"That people guiding the program or building it are approved based on their political affiliation signals a real concern that the project itself is very politicized and not being conducted on the technical merits," missile defense expert Laura Grego told Reuters.

For now, the Trump administration's efforts to outline a plan for the Golden Dome appear to be chaotic and largely centered around lining the pockets of contractors.

"To this day, no one knows what the requirements are," a person familiar with the process told Reuters. "There isn't a coordinated effort with a true vision. All of these companies are just grabbing at this pot of money."

In other words, we simply have no idea what SpaceX's involvement was or will be going forward — if the Golden Dome project even exists in any meaningful way at this point.

And Musk and Trump are only seemingly starting their process of reconciliation. On Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the president "is appreciative" of Musk's lukewarm apology and that there were no plans to review his government contracts.

If there's one thing we can say with any degree of certainty, it's that it's extremely unlikely the Trump administration will meet its extremely ambitious deadline of completing its missile defense shield system by the end of his term in January 2029.

"The new datapoint is the $175 billion, but the question remains, over what period of time," Center for Strategic and International Studies' Tom Karako told Reuters last month.

"It's probably ten years," he added.

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