Trump Team Scrambles After Report He’s Killing Manufacturing Jobs

The labor market is slowing, but it’s all good news in the White House.

The U.S. added 139,000 jobs in May, a slight decline from April, according to a jobs report released Friday. The unemployment rate remained at 4.2 percent, still within the ballpark of historic lows reached in 2023, when the unemployment rate reached 3.4 percent—the lowest it had been in more than five decades. But within the folds of the report hid a major red flag for Donald Trump’s agenda: The U.S. is still bleeding manufacturing jobs.

“GREAT JOB NUMBERS, STOCK MARKET UP BIG! AT THE SAME TIME, BILLIONS POURING IN FROM TARIFFS!!!” Trump celebrated on Truth Social.

But even the president’s favorite conservative network couldn’t hide its dismay at the slight manufacturing downturn.

“Now, 8,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in May. That’s not what you wanted to see,” said Fox Business host Stuart Varney.

“Well, we’re certainly holding steady,” said Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. “And under the Trump administration, manufacturing jobs are still up over what the last administration, under [Joe] Biden, had.

“The focus of my ‘America at Work’ tour is to increase those manufacturing jobs, and we’ll continue to stay laser focused on that as the president continues to double down on how important this is to the American economy,” she added.

“But how come we’re losing 8,000 manufacturing jobs in May, when there’s a big push to bring manufacturing jobs back to America? How come we’re losing those jobs?” Varney pressed.

Chavez-DeRemer was stuck in her script. “We’re certainly holding steady,” she insisted.

Since the beginning of April, Trump has pitched his global tariff agenda as a means to return manufacturing jobs to U.S. shores. But two months later, the president’s on-again, off-again tariffs have done little more than add tumult to American markets and trade. Investors have learned to play the market by an unflattering acronym—TACO, or “Trump always chickens out”—while administration officials such as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have blundered by publicly admitting they have no intention of bringing tariffs between the U.S. and other nations down to zero.

The breakup is really official now: President Trump is getting rid of his Tesla.

Trump’s red Tesla with Florida tags will be given away or sold, according to Fox News. This comes after Elon Musk and the president’s massive argument spilled over on Thursday, as Musk lambasted Trump’s big, beautiful bill for adding trillions to the deficit, while Trump posited that Musk knew about the bill all along and was just upset that he was losing his E.V. subsidies. Now Trump is ditching his Tesla too.

While this beef isn’t particularly shocking, it’s a long way from where the two men’s relationship was just a few months ago. In March, Musk pulled up to the White House with multiple Tesla trucks and cars and did free promo with the president.

“I’m going to buy [a Tesla] because, number one, it’s a great product,” Trump told reporters then. “It’s as good as it gets. And number two, because this man has devoted his energy and his life to doing this. I think he’s been treated very unfairly by a very small group of people.”

Musk has tweeted through the pain over the last 24 hours, calling his critics “retards” and threatening to pull his Space X program from the U.S. But Trump couldn’t seem to care less as he pushes his bill forward regardless of what his former confidant says. This is what happens when the richest man on earth gets into it with perhaps the pettiest president ever.

For months, Donald Trump and Elon Musk were practically inseparable. Now, a week after the Tesla CEO formally left the White House, the president has a new title for his ex-financier: “the man who has lost his mind.”

Speaking with ABC News’s Jonathan Karl early Friday morning, Trump added fuel to the MAGA duo’s viscerally public breakup. He did not, however, sound “angry or even concerned” about the feud, reported Karl.

“As for reports that there is going to be a Trump/Musk call scheduled for today, Trump told me he is ‘not particularly’ interested in talking to Musk although he says Musk wants to talk to him,” Karl wrote on X.

People close to the president have described Trump as “bummed” about his severed relationship with Musk.

The fiery back-and-forth between Trump and his former adviser is the culmination of differing opinions on the president’s “big, beautiful bill.” Musk has spent days trying to size down Trump’s domestic budget agenda, which aims to extend his 2017 tax cut plan for multimillionaires and corporations.

The tech billionaire has referred to the spending package as “pork-filled” and a “disgusting abomination,” criticizing the continuing resolution for potentially adding trillions of dollars to the national deficit. Musk has also leveraged his gargantuan fortune to influence Congress against voting for the bill, pledging to finance primary opponents to any lawmaker who votes in favor of the tax cut.

On Thursday, the stern disagreement boiled into a digital spectacle, with the two powerhouses throwing insults at each other over social media in real time until Musk claimed that Trump was mentioned in the infamous Epstein files. Musk wrote on X that Trump’s alleged involvement was “the real reason” the pedophile exposé had not yet been made public.

In response, Trump posted on Truth Social, “I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago. This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress. It’s a Record Cut in Expenses, $1.6 Trillion Dollars, and the Biggest Tax Cut ever given.”

Hours later, Musk was retweeting Trump’s posts from 2012 and 2013, claiming that the deficit- and budget-minded former reality TV star had been replaced by a “body double.”

But Musk has had real influence in breaking up the MAGA block. Several Republican senators have said they oppose Trump’s bill as-is, with the majority of naysayers citing the budget’s enormous price tag as their reason why.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went on yet another angry tirade against federal judges who rule against Donald Trump.

During an appearance on Fox News Thursday night, Leavitt was asked to respond to a federal judge who blocked the removal of the wife and five children of a man charged in a firebombing attack against peaceful protesters in Boulder, Colorado. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had the family arrested despite having no evidence that they were involved in the attack.

Leavitt, who regularly rails against anyone who opposes Trump, was predictably incensed.

“Well, this is just another rogue decision by a rogue judge who is trying to be—I don’t know—the president of the United States? The secretary of state? The secretary of homeland security?” Leavitt said. “Surely, these important matters of both homeland security and national security do not belong to lower district, local judges in these districts across the country.”

Leavitt’s insistence that federal judges, whom she attempted to dismiss as “local,” don’t have the jurisdiction to rule against Trump betrays a failure to grasp the whole “checks and balances” part of the U.S. Constitution.

Leavitt continued, once again complaining about another federal judge who had blocked the unlawful deportation of immigrants to South Sudan, and supposedly stranded some ICE agents in a “dangerous part of the world.” (The judge did not specifically say that the agents needed to stay overseas, which means the government is choosing not to bring them back.)

“Lower district court judges do not get to dictate the foreign policy and the national security interests of the United States of America. We can’t run a country if the executive is not allowed to freely exercise its powers, and that’s what we’re seeing take place,” Leavitt said.

Unfortunately for the Trump administration, the hits to its illegal immigration agenda just keep on coming. A federal judge on Thursday blocked the arrest and removal of Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student and green card holder who was targeted by the administration over her involvement in pro-Palestinian protests. In a brutal hearing, U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald called the government’s position “disturbing” and “disappointing.”

“This is a new world. I’m a little taken aback,” Reice Buchwald said.

Elon Musk spent his evening calling Steve Bannon a “retard” after Bannon called for Trump to seize Musk’s companies and deport him following their fallout over the budget bill.

Musk and Trump had a highly publicized spat on Thursday that saw the president expressing his “disappointment” in Musk’s opposition to his “big, beautiful bill” on live TV, chalking the conflict up to Musk losing his government Tesla subsidies. The Silicon Valley right came to Musk’s side, while Bannon and the deep-MAGA right rallied around their leader.

“He doesn’t know anything. He’s a know-it-all. He knows some engineering, don’t get me wrong, but he doesn’t know anything about the real world,” Bannon said of Musk on his Thursday show. “Any fanboys that still exist … understand that DOGE, he didn’t find any fraud. There’s plenty of fraud out there. This is President Trump’s first complaint. Was this all B.S. with the DOGE?”

Bannon continued.

“Space X … President Trump should be taking immediately. When he threatens to take one of the big programs out of Space X, President Trump tonight should sign an executive order calling for the defense production act and seize Space X tonight before midnight,” Bannon said, responding to Musk’s threats to pull his Space X programs from the Trump administration.

“They should initiate a formal investigation of his immigration status because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately,” Bannon later said to The New York Times, adding that he told Trump the same thing.

Multiple tech bros came to Musk’s defense on X, and the world’s richest man popped up in their replies to voice his agreement, calling Bannon multiple variations of “retard.” Musk called Bannon “peak retard” and a “communist retard” multiple times on X.

Bannon and Musk have been at odds since the H-1B visa fight, which underscored the ideological rifts within Trump’s base that are fully coming into fruition now. Bannon is the core of MAGA, resonating deeply with a right-wing populist base. Musk was simply a quick, messy fling, which he is now realizing—and not handling very well.

Billions of dollars are on the line as Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue their excruciatingly public breakup.

“In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately,” Musk posted on X Thursday.

The statement came moments after Trump attacked Musk and his government contracts amid the tech billionaire’s multiday tirade against the president’s “big, beautiful bill.”

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday afternoon. In a separate post, Trump said that Musk was “wearing thin” before he was asked to leave, adding that Musk went “CRAZY” after Trump nixed his electric vehicle mandate.

Musk has spent days trying to size down Trump’s domestic agenda, which aims to extend his 2017 tax cut plan for multimillionaires and corporations. Musk has referred to the spending package as “pork-filled” and as a “disgusting abomination,” criticizing the continuing resolution for potentially adding trillions of dollars to the national deficit. The world’s richest man has also leveraged his gargantuan fortune to influence Congress against voting for the bill, pledging to finance primaries for the opponents of any lawmaker who votes in favor of the tax cut.

Trump brushed off Musk’s concerns Thursday by insisting the ex-White House adviser was only upset that the bill removed the electric vehicle mandate that subsidizes Tesla. Musk hit back in real time, sparking the flame war.

In a strange attempt to influence the outcome of the spending package, Musk also claimed that Trump was mentioned in the infamous Epstein files, writing on X that Trump’s alleged involvement was “the real reason” the pedophile exposé had not yet been made public.

Trump claimed he wasn’t bothered by Musk’s meltdown. “I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago,” he posted in response to Musk’s promise to decommission his SpaceX aircraft. “This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress. It’s a Record Cut in Expenses, $1.6 Trillion Dollars, and the Biggest Tax Cut ever given.

“If this Bill doesn’t pass, there will be a 68 percent Tax Increase, and things far worse than that,” Trump continued. “I didn’t create this mess, I’m just here to FIX IT. This puts our Country on a Path of Greatness. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Elon Musk’s feud with Donald Trump escalated quickly Thursday, when the billionaire former bureaucrat hinted at the president’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender and alleged human trafficker.

As Musk and Trump volleyed on social media, attacking each other, the former DOGE czar decided to go nuclear, shortly after the president threatened to cut government contracts with Musk’s many businesses, which have totaled $38 billion.

“Time to drop the really big bomb,” Musk wrote. “@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.”

“Have a nice day, DJT!” he added.

Musk’s post isn’t strictly revelatory. Trump’s name appeared seven times in the “Epstein files” his own administration released in February, as part of “phase one” of unveiling the secretive materials. The ultimately unremarkable collection of documents included flight logs, an evidence list, and painstakingly redacted pages from Epstein’s address book but didn’t contain anything that wasn’t already public information.

But Musk’s insistence that this was a “really big bomb” implies there is possibly more to the story than Trump’s administration has deigned to reveal.

“Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out,” Musk wrote in a separate post.

It’s worth noting that if Musk knows more details about Trump and Epstein’s relationship, it apparently didn’t bother him until he was on the outs with the president.

Meanwhile, Trump’s friendship with Epstein is no secret.

Trump was reportedly incredibly candid with Epstein about his feelings toward members of his administration, while the New York financier touted a photo of the president with half-naked women taken at the site of the pedophile’s rampant sexual abuse of young girls.

In November, a former model came forward with allegations that Trump had once groped her at a party, as part of a “twisted game” he was playing with Epstein. In September, Trump praised Epstein, calling the sex offender, who died in prison before ever standing trial for sex-trafficking charges, a “good salesman.”

Trump had previously waffled for years on the prospect of releasing files on Epstein’s known associates, and claimed that the files likely contained “phony” stuff.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump are turning to social media to publicly process their increasingly messy breakup.

Musk took to X Thursday to air his big feelings after Trump claimed Musk “knew every aspect of this bill, and he never had a problem until right after he left.” Trump insisted that the billionaire former bureaucrat was only upset because, if passed, the spending bill would remove the electric vehicle mandate that subsidizes Tesla.

The infernal tech bro insisted on litigating the breakup.

“False, this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!” Musk wrote on X.

Trump almost immediately fired back at Musk on Truth Social. “Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump wrote.

“Such an obvious lie. So sad,” Musk replied.

The president then threatened to go after Musk’s government contracts and subsidies, of which Musk has amassed nearly $38 billion worth. “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

After Trump’s press conference, during which he made the comments, Musk began posting mournfully about the person he thought he knew.

“Where is this guy today??” Musk asked in one X repost, which contained a collage of Trump’s old Twitter posts from 2011 and 2012 railing against massive government spending and calls to raise the debt ceiling.

Moments later, he seemed angry, responding to a claim Trump had made that he could have won Pennsylvania without the billionaire’s help.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote.

“Such ingratitude,” he wrote in a separate post.

After about an hour, Musk mourned the president’s unwavering support at an event he held for Tesla at the White House. “Remember this?” Musk wrote, posting a video of Trump saying Musk had never complained about his decision to end the electric vehicle mandate.

In classic breakup fashion, Musk has also set off on an unfollowing spree, ridding his X feed of the president’s allies, who might remind him of better days in the White House.

Musk apparently unfollowed White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Charlie Kirk, Trump’s fascist little sidekick who runs Turning Point USA, the conservative youth organization that worked alongside Musk’s America PAC to put Trump in office.

Earlier this week, Musk had begun to openly criticize Trump’s wildly expensive spending bill, and while the president may have allowed Musk to disparage Republican legislation in the past, it seems that is a privilege only afforded those in the White House—which Musk formally departed last week.

The Trump administration’s brilliant plan to use tariffs as a means to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. has run into a bit of a hitch: Not everything that the public wants can be manufactured in America.

Testifying before the House Appropriations Committee Thursday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick tried to brush off concerns over the president’s tariff proposals, insisting that the nation and its myriad businesses would learn self-reliance under the controversial policy.

“What’s the tariff on bananas? Americans, by the way, love bananas. We buy billions of them a year,” asked Pennsylvania Representative Madeleine Dean. “What’s the tariff on bananas?”

“The tariff on bananas would be representative of the countries that produce them,” said Lutnick, eventually clarifying that the tariff rate would be generally 10 percent.

Bananas top the list of America’s favorite fresh fruits, with the average American consuming approximately 27 pounds of bananas every year, according to the Mayo Clinic. That’s the basis of a colossal global trade network, fueling billions of dollars in trade between the U.S. and its biggest banana suppliers: Guatemala, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Honduras. In March alone, the U.S. imported roughly $260 million in bananas. But Americans have already started to notice changes at the till in the handful of weeks that have passed since Donald Trump first announced his tariff plan.

“Walmart has already increased the cost of bananas by 8 percent,” Dean said. Bananas are Walmart’s most popular product. By the middle of May, banana prices at the big box store had gone up to 54 cents per pound, from 50 cents.

“As countries do deals with us, that will go to zero,” Lutnick said. (On Wednesday, Lutnick let slip that he believes reciprocity—or the idea of bringing tariffs between two countries to zero—would be the “silliest thing we could do.”)

“Mr. Secretary, I believe you know better. I believe you realize that a trade deficit is not something to fear. I believe you know that predicability is essential for businesses. I wish you would show that truth to this administration,” Dean said.

But after Dean’s time expired, Lutnick insisted that he had a final comment to make on the issue.

“There is no uncertainty, if you build in America and you produce your product in America, there will be no tariff,” Lutnick said, as Dean interjected: “We cannot build bananas in America.”

President Trump told reporters he was “disappointed” in Elon Musk, and Tesla’s stock took a nosedive minutes later. 

This comes as the conflict over the predicted deficit increase in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” reaches a new level. The president claimed on Thursday that his removal of the E.V. mandate is what set Musk against the massive spending bill.  

“Elon endorsed me very strongly, he actually campaigned for me.… I would’ve won Pennsylvania easily anyway, even if the governor ran, the real governor,” Trump said on national television. “I’m very disappointed, because Elon knew the inner workings of the bill better than almost anybody sitting here, better than you people, he knew everything about it. All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out that we’re gonna have to cut the E.V. mandate.”

“Whatever. Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill,” Musk replied on X, insisting that it was about the debt and not his own company.  “In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that[’s] both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this! Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill. Slim and beautiful is the way.”

Tesla stocks have fallen by nearly 30 points since Trump’s initial comment, a nearly 9 percent drop. Musk had previously cited Tesla’s poor financial performance as one of the reasons he was stepping back from politics. But he’s continued to stay involved since his going-away party in the Oval Office last Friday, and now this week his E.V. company will suffer more. 

Shares have dropped 12 percent since May 27, around the time of his announced exit from politics. Tesla is also facing sales issues and an overall tarnishing of its reputation. 

“He knew every aspect of this bill, and he never had a problem until right after he left. And if you saw the statements he made about me, which I’m sure you can get very easily, it’s very fresh … he said the most beautiful things about me,” Trump said on Thursday. “And he hasn’t said bad about me personally, but I’m sure that’ll be next. I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot.”