Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
Elon Musk has said he “regrets some” of his posts about Donald Trump, after a spat between two of the world’s most powerful men resulted in a public split last week.
“I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far,” the Tesla chief executive said in a post on his social media company X on Wednesday.
The relationship between the pair had showed signs of strains in recent weeks, with Musk criticising parts of the White House agenda, including the US president’s signature tax bill, which he called a “disgusting abomination”.
It then imploded last week as the two traded insults. In a series of posts on X, Musk called for Trump to be impeached, suggested his trade tariffs would cause a US recession, threatened to decommission SpaceX capsules used to transport Nasa astronauts and insinuated the president was associated with the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Allies have since urged the US president and his billionaire backer to repair their relationship.
The FT reported last week that senior figures in the tech industry have urged the two to reunite, amid concerns the damaging spat could impact the administration’s plans for tax cuts and deregulation.
Late last week Trump said that he was “not even thinking about Elon”.
“The poor guy’s got a problem”, he told CNN. But he added “I wish him well”.
Musk helped bankroll Trump’s presidential campaign and spearheaded the administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), but left the administration last month.
