US President Donald Trump has said his relationship with Tesla boss Elon Musk is over.
“I would assume so, yeah,” Trump told NBC News on Saturday when asked if he thought the pair’s close relationship had ended. He replied “No” when asked if he wished to mend the damaged ties.
The comments were Trump’s latest since the epic spat between him and Musk broke out on social media.
The president has received support from the vast majority of Republicans.
Vice-President JD Vance stated that Musk had “gone so nuclear” and may never be allowed back into the organisation.
Vance told podcaster Theo Von that the CEOs of Tesla and SpaceX made a “big mistake” by attacking the president.
For weeks, Musk has been slamming Trump’s centrepiece legislation, known as the “Big Beautiful Bill”, as it passed through Congress.
He claimed that if passed, the bill will increase the national deficit by trillions of dollars and “undermine” his work as head of Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, and its efforts to reduce government spending.
Musk, who left DOGE after 129 days on the job, said on his social networking site X that the measure was a “disgusting abomination” but did not directly condemn Trump.
On Thursday, however, Trump told reporters that he was “disappointed” by Musk’s actions.
Musk responded with a flurry of tweets on X, claiming that Trump would have lost the election without him and accusing Trump of being involved in the files of Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious banker who died in jail while awaiting sex trafficking charges.
He has now deleted the tweet, and Epstein’s counsel has denied the allegations.
Trump responded on his social media platform Truth Social, claiming that Musk had gone “crazy”.
In one post, he threatened to cancel Musk’s federal contracts.
Trump said Musk had been “disrespectful to the office of the president” in an interview with NBC News on Saturday.
“I think it’s a very bad thing, because he’s very disrespectful. You could not disrespect the office of the president,” Trump said.
Musk, the world’s richest man, who donated approximately $250 million to Trump’s presidential campaign, hinted during the social media feud that he might support some of Trump’s opponents in next year’s midterm elections, putting his support behind challengers to lawmakers who supported Trump’s tax bill.
When asked about Musk’s potential support for Democratic politicians running against Republicans, Trump stated he would suffer “serious consequences”.
