President Donald Trump finally fired back at former White House adviser Elon Musk on Thursday, following a week of public bashing of Republican priorities from the billionaire CEO.
During a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House, Trump said he was “very disappointed in Elon” and “surprised” by his comments. Trump accused Musk of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and suggested that he was jealous of no longer being an Oval Office insider.
“Elon and I had a great relationship,” Trump said. “I don’t know if we will anymore.”
Reports had surfaced on Wednesday that Trump was privately “furious” with the tech mogul, but his remarks on Thursday were his first public comments since Musk called the president’s One Beautiful Bill Act a “disgusting abomination.”
Musk has spent the last several days targeting Trump's spending bill on his social media platform X. The Tesla head has been reposting old posts from the president’s account that criticized the rising national debt, following a Congressional Budget Office analysis that suggests the bill will add trillions to the deficit.
"Where is this guy today?" Musk wondered. "Was he replaced by a body double!?"
Musk took issue with the president’s assertion that his former adviser had known the content of the spending bill and was quite supportive until he realized that he would cut subsidies for electric vehicles. The Tesla CEO said he had not been shown the legislation “even once,” telling Trump to keep the EV incentive cuts as long as they “ditch the MOUNTAIN OF DISGUSTING PORK in the bill.”
In a fit of pique, Musk argued that Trump would have lost the Presidential election without his significant financial contributions, accusing the president of "ingratitude" for the hundreds of millions of dollars he injected into Republican campaigns in 2024.
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