The bitter escalation in their social media exchanges suggests the close relationship US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who helped him get to the White House is over.
When asked if this was so, Trump told NBC News on Saturday: “I would assume so, yeah.”
According to the BBC, he replied “No” when asked if he wished to mend the damaged ties.
The fallout followed Musk’s public criticism of Trump tax and spending bill, a key domestic policy which the President dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill”.
Musk called it a “disgusting abomination”.
On Thursday, however, Trump told reporters he was “disappointed” with Musk’s behaviour.
Musk responded with a flurry of posts on X, saying that Trump would have lost the election without him and accusing Trump of being implicated in files on Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in jail awaiting sex trafficking charges.
He has since deleted the post and Epstein’s lawyer has denied the accusations.
Trump responded on his social media platform, Truth Social, by saying that Musk had gone “crazy”. In one post, he threatened to cut Musk’s contracts with the federal government.
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