Ashley St. Clair has thrown her hat into the ring, subtly taking a swipe at her ex-partner, Elon Musk, amidst his escalating spat with President Donald Trump. The 26-year-old mother of Musk's nine-month-old son, Romulus, posted a teasing message on Musk's X platform on June 5, addressing Trump directly: "Hey @realDonaldTrump, lmk if you need any breakup advice."
Indeed, the cracks in Musk and Trump's once-close alliance began to show more than a week after Musk stepped down from his position as head of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The SpaceX CEO has recently made no secret of his disdain for Trump's tax cut and spending bill, which passed the House of Representatives last May and is now being debated in the Senate. Musk claimed that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would balloon the U.S. debt and boasted about his role in bringing the Republican leader back to the White House. "Without me, Trump would have lost the election," Musk, one of the politician's largest financial backers for the 2024 campaign, alleged in a subsequent post. "Such ingratitude," he lamented.
However, Trump swiftly countered Musk's criticism, hinting that Musk's May 28 departure from the White House hadn't been as amicable as initially portrayed. "Elon was 'wearing thin,'" Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on June 5. "I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (which he knew for months I was planning to do!), and he just went CRAZY!"
While Musk dismissed Trump's claim as an "obvious lie" on X, the two continued their tit-for-tat over Musk's government contracts, a stark contrast to their dynamic over the past year. "I love the president," Musk had told Fox News' Sean Hannity in February. "I think President Trump is a good man." Trump, too, had heaped praise on Musk even before his inauguration. "He's a character, he's a special guy, he's a super genius," the U.S. leader had said about Musk in a victory speech after winning the presidential election. "We have to protect our geniuses. We don't have that many of them."
As Trump's relationship with his former senior advisor takes a tumultuous turn, Musk is not the only prominent figure with a seat at the table in this high-stakes drama.
