It’s official: United States President Donald Trump and the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, have broken up.

At the end of last month, Musk departed from his post as the head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he oversaw the mass firing of federal employees and dismantling of various government agencies – all the while benefitting from his own companies’ lucrative contracts with the government.

Anyway, US “democracy” has never met a conflict of interest it didn’t like.

Musk’s service at the White House initially appeared to end on an amicable note as Trump praised him for the “colossal change” he had achieved “in the old ways of doing business in Washington”. The former head of DOGE in turn thanked the president for the opportunity.

But soon after his departure, Musk publicly criticised the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, a tax and spending bill that Trump is currently obsessed with passing, slamming it as a “disgusting abomination”.

There ensued predictably dramatic social media exchanges between the two right-wing billionaires with Trump pronouncing Musk “so depressed and so heartbroken” after leaving the White House and offering the additional coherent analysis:

“ It’s sort of Trump derangement syndrome. We have it with others, too. They leave, and they wake up in the morning, and the glamour’s........

© Al Jazeera