US president Donald Trump is not interested in talking with his former ally Elon Musk, amid a bitter feud over the president’s sweeping tax-cut bill, a White House official said on Friday, adding that no phone call between the two men is planned for the day.
A separate White House official had said earlier that they were going to talk to each other on Friday.
Mr Trump and Mr Musk conducted an extraordinary day of hostilities on Thursday - largely over social media - marking a stark end to a close alliance.
Mr Trump attacked Mr Musk as “crazy” and threatened to rip up his government contracts, as a row between two of the world’s most powerful men erupted into an all-out public feud.
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Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday, the US president said he was “very disappointed” in Mr Musk for criticising his signature tax Bill, and suggested he was trying to defend his business interests.
“He’s not the first ... people leave my administration and some of them actually become hostile,” Mr Trump said of the Tesla owner’s broadsides in recent days. “They leave, and they wake up in the morning, and the glamour’s gone, the whole world is different, and they become hostile.”
He added: “I’m very disappointed in Elon. I helped Elon a lot.”
In a follow-up post on his social media site, Mr Trump said Mr Musk, who is upset that the tax bill now before the Senate would increase the US deficit, had been “wearing thin” and that he had “asked him to leave” government.
[ Tesla suffers biggest one-day drop in market value after Trump-Musk spatOpens in new window ]
The president claimed Mr Musk opposed the “big beautiful bill” because the administration was ending policies that benefited Tesla and that Mr Musk “just went crazy”.
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget ... is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” he added, in an apparent threat to end billions of dollars’ worth of business between the US government and Musk companies including SpaceX.
The comments prompted an explosive riposte from Mr Musk, who had thus far refrained from criticising the president directly.
Mr Musk, who in April retreated from politics because of the “blowback” against his businesses, suggested he regretted backing Mr Trump with more than $250 million during last year’s election, after the president claimed he would have won without the billionaire’s cash.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” he posted on his social media site X soon after the Oval Office tirade. “Such ingratitude.”
He later claimed that Mr Trump appears in files related to the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. “That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!” he wrote on X.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt gave a statement to CNN, describing Mr Musk’s Epstein files claim as an “unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted”.
He also posted that Mr Trump’s tariffs “will cause a recession in the second half of this year”.
Shares in Tesla fell by almost 11 per cent following Mr Trump’s remarks and were down 13.5 per cent on the day, sending the stock to a one-month low.
Mr Musk, the US’s largest political donor, also suggested that Republican lawmakers should side with him over the president.
“Some food for thought as they ponder this question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years,” the multi-billionaire wrote on X. He floated the idea of forming a new party.
He also hit back at Mr Trump’s suggestion that he had opposed the “big beautiful bill” because it removed tax credits for electric vehicles and clean energy, which have long benefited Tesla in the US.
“Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill,” Mr Musk posted.
Mr Musk had already announced that he was stepping back from his involvement in the Trump administration, where he had led the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). He boasted that Doge would cut trillions of dollars from federal spending, although the savings so far have been much more modest.
Steve Davis, one of Mr Musk’s lieutenants at SpaceX who led Doge on a day-to-day basis, had also now left the administration, according to a government official.
More senior figures close to the billionaire were set to abandon the initiative in the coming days, the official said.
Mr Musk himself has suggested that the tax bill would wipe out any savings made by Doge, which claims to have identified roughly $180 billion in cuts to date. On Wednesday, the congressional fiscal watchdog said the legislation would add $2.4 trillion to the US debt by 2034.
Mr Musk also said his company SpaceX would begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft in response to Mr Trump’s threats to cancel his government contracts.
“In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately,” Mr Musk posted on X, which he owns.
He later withdrew this threat, responding to an X user who advised him to cool off and step back for a couple of days: “Good advice. Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon.”
Nasa relies on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). Since 2008, SpaceX has received more than $20bn in government contracts, largely from Nasa and the Department of Defense.
In March, two Nasa astronauts returned to Earth in a Dragon capsule after being stranded on the ISS for nearly nine months, after their Boeing Starliner capsule faced technical issues and returned to Earth without them.
The next SpaceX Dragon launch is scheduled to take place on June 10th. The Dragon is expected to carry four people to and from the ISS on Axiom Mission 4.
Nasa press secretary Bethany Stevens, in a statement on X after Mr Musk’s announcement, said the agency “will continue to execute upon the president’s vision for the future of space”.
“We will continue to work with our industry partners to ensure the president’s objectives in space are met,” she added. – Agencies
