Tech billionaire Elon Musk lashed out at Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Tuesday, accusing the Trump administration official of “trying to kill NASA” in a vitriolic string of posts on his social media platform, X.
Musk, who served as head of the Department of Government Efficiency until late May, had previously clashed with Duffy over efforts to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy.
“I think it might not have been intentional, might have been ham-handed [like] some of the requests that were made by [DOGE], but my position was, we are not going to fire air traffic controllers,” Duffy told the New York Post earlier this year.
“Safety-critical positions are not going to be fired within the Department of Transportation,” he added. “We can do things more efficiently … but we are not going to fire air controllers.
“And so, we had a little back and forth, [but] we got along very well after that. I think the papers made it a bigger deal than it was.”
However, hostilities flared on Monday after Duffy told CNBC that Musk’s company SpaceX had fallen “behind” the administration’s timeline for returning to the moon and that he would allow other companies to compete for the government contract.
“We’re not going to wait for one company,” Duffy said. “We’re going to push this forward and win the second space race against the Chinese. Get back to the moon, set up a camp, a base.”
The Trump Cabinet official, who also serves as the acting administrator of NASA, then posted a clip of his interview on X, explaining that the government was “opening up” production of the moon-landing system to other companies.
Musk raged against Duffy’s remarks in a series of acerbic posts, beginning with a GIF of an exchange in which an African anchor asked a guest, “Why are you gay?”
Next, he took aim at SpaceX rival Blue Origin, which is owned by fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos, writing, “Blue Origin has never delivered a payload to orbit, let alone the Moon.”
The SpaceX CEO resumed his barrage of attacks on Duffy on Tuesday, dubbing him “Sean Dummy” and accusing him of “trying to kill NASA.”
“The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ,” Musk wrote, referring to Duffy.
Newsmax reached out to the Transportation Department for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
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