Elon Musk has taken to X (formerly Twitter) to express regret over his war of words with President Donald Trump, backing down after less than a week and conceding that “some” of his posts attacking the commander-in-chief had been excessive.
“I regret some of my posts about President Donald Trump last week. They went too far,” the world’s richest man wrote on the social media platform he owns in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
The apology comes six days after Trump said he was “very disappointed” in his former special adviser and campaign donor for criticizing the “Big, Beautiful Bill” he is attempting to push through the Senate, prompting Musk to lash out with a series of highly personal attacks against the president, who responded in kind on his own platform Truth Social.
On the same day that Musk appeared to extend an olive branch, Trump said in a pre-recorded podcast interview that reconciliation between the pair was possible.
“Look, I have no hard feelings,” Trump said in the interview recorded on Monday. “I was really surprised that that happened. He went after a bill that’s phenomenal ... He just — I think he feels very badly that he said that, actually.”
Musk’s 130-day tenure leading the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as a government employee came to an end on May 30. Still, just days later, the billionaire began trashing Trump’s signature tax and spending package, warning it would greatly increase the national debt and calling it a “disgusting abomination.”
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” he wrote on X. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
Musk followed that up a day later with a fresh appeal to “KILL the BILL”, imploring his millions of followers to contact their representatives and senators to remind them that “bankrupting America is NOT ok!”
Behind the scenes the president was reported to be quickly “losing patience” with Musk’s intervention and “confused” by his animosity, and he eventually said as much while hosting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House on Thursday.
“I’m very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here, better than you people,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “He knew everything about it. He had no problem with it. All of a sudden, he had a problem.”
In addition to expressing his disappointment in the Tesla and SpaceX boss, Trump also claimed that he could have won the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania in last year’s presidential election without Musk’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 shot back on X. “Such ingratitude,” he added in a separate post.
From there, a vicious exchange of barbs commenced on the billionaires’ competing social media platforms, with Trump saying Musk’s company had been “wearing thin” and accusing him on Truth Social of going “CRAZY” while also threatening to take away his lucrative government contracts.
Musk responded on X by threatening to decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, which is used to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and, most shockingly, alleging that Trump was mentioned in top secret files held by the government on the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein – which Musk said was the true reason for their being withheld from the public.
Musk also posted a picture of Trump and Epstein together, as well as a video from 1992 of the two New Yorkers chatting at a house party.
The following day, West Wing aides indicated that Trump and Musk were planning a phone call to clear the air, only for Trump to tell reporters that he had no interest in speaking to the man who had donated at least $288m to his election campaign just months earlier – a remark that left their once-close relationship in limbo.
The fallout from the spat saw former Trump aide Steve Bannon call for Musk to be deported and investigated over his alleged drug use, while the late-night satirists had a field day and the internet exploded with speculation and opinion.
But the situation has since been eclipsed by the eruption of protests in Los Angeles against the president’s crackdown on illegal immigration, which have seen activists clash with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and the president controversially send in the National Guard to aid local law enforcement officers in maintaining order.
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