Washington: President Donald Trump is “not interested” in a call with Tesla CEO Elon Musk to patch things up, after their feud exploded into public.
“There are no plans” for a call between President Trump and the billionaire Musk, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said.
Politico had reported that White House aides had scheduled a call Friday with the Tesla CEO to try to patch things up between the two men.
Trump is “not interested” in a call, a senior White House official told NBC News.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump is focused on the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’, the GOP domestic policy bill that Musk had trashed, which triggered their falling out.
“That’s the mindset he left the Oval Office in yesterday,” she said.
A Trump administration official added, “There could be anything — I’d like to de-escalate a very unfortunate situation. But there are no calls on the books, at least not now.”
The rift between Trump and Musk comes after friction built more quietly between the tech billionaire and others in the Trump administration during Musk’s time at the Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk and Wiles “didn’t really have a great relationship”, said one person close to Trump, who said the chief of staff would get “irritated” at Musk’s attempts to give orders to Cabinet secretaries or staffers, NBC reported.
This person, speaking on background, said he believes there will be movement inside the administration now “to get rid of some of the DOGE guys at the various offices”.
White House aides scrambled into at least two closed-door meetings on Thursday to strategise about whether and how to respond to Musk’s social media barrage.
Vice President JD Vance was with Trump on Thursday when the tweets began and they spoke multiple times in the afternoon, according to a person familiar with the day’s events.
Trump encouraged Vance to be diplomatic about Musk if asked about him, the person said.
Vance defended Trump in a post on X Thursday night, writing, “President Trump has done more than any person in my lifetime to earn the trust of the movement he leads. I’m proud to stand beside him.”
Meanwhile, Trump is considering selling or giving away the red Tesla that he purchased in March, according to a senior White House official. The president is still weighing his options and has not made a final decision, the official added.
As to whether there will be a rapprochement between Musk and Trump, the person close to Trump said that, knowing the president, “he would want to see Elon be quiet for a while and then Elon reach out to him and say sorry. I think the president would then let it go.
“I don’t think [Trump] is going to try to make the peace,” the person continued.
The spat began Thursday when Trump criticised Musk’s recent attacks on the Republican policy measure over its estimated increase to the deficit, and turned into a full-scale blowup that sent ripples through Congress and Tesla’s stock prices.
“I’m very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here, better than you people,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
“I’m very disappointed in Elon,” Trump said. “I’ve helped Elon a lot.”
Trump suggested that Musk, who earlier this week called the GOP bill a “disgusting abomination”, was upset that the bill cut out a tax credit implemented by the Biden administration to incentivize electric vehicle purchases.
“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 in a post on X.
The two men spent the rest of the day Thursday lobbing insults at each other on their own social media platforms — Musk on X and Trump on Truth Social.
Musk posted on X more than 40 times Thursday criticising the GOP tax bill and reacting to Trump’s comments.
UNI
