President Donald Trump is not backing off his battle with Elon Musk, saying Saturday that he has no desire to repair their relationship and warning that his former ally and campaign benefactor could face “serious consequences” if he tries to help Democrats in upcoming elections.
Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker in a phone interview that he has no plans to make up with Musk. Asked specifically if he thought his relationship with the mega-billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is over, Trump responded, “I would assume so, yeah.”
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“I’m too busy doing other things,” Trump continued. “You know, I won an election in a landslide. I gave him a lot of breaks, long before this happened, I gave him breaks in my first administration, and saved his life in my first administration, I have no intention of speaking to him.”
The president also issued a warning amid chatter that Musk could back Democratic lawmakers and candidates in the 2026 midterm elections.
“If he does, he’ll have to pay the consequences for that,” Trump told NBC, though he declined to share what those consequences would be. Musk’s businesses have many lucrative federal contracts.
The president’s latest comments suggest Musk is moving from close ally to a potential new target for Trump, who has aggressively wielded the powers of his office to crack down on critics and punish perceived enemies. As a major government contractor, Musk’s businesses could be particularly vulnerable to retribution.
The dramatic rupture between the president and the world’s richest man began Thursday, with Musk’s public criticism of Trump’s “big beautiful bill” pending on Capitol Hill. Musk has warned that the bill will increase the federal deficit and called it a “disgusting abomination.” Trump and Musk began trading bitterly personal attacks on social media, sending the White House and GOP congressional leaders scrambling to assess the fallout.
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Vice President JD Vance, in an interview Friday,
tried to downplay the feud
. He said Musk was making a “huge mistake” going after Trump, but tried to downplay it as an “emotional guy” getting frustrated.
“I hope that eventually Elon comes back into the fold. Maybe that’s not possible now because he’s gone so nuclear,” Vance said.
Other Republicans in recent days urged the two men to mend fences.
Musk’s torrent of social media posts attacking Trump came as the president portrayed him as disgruntled and “CRAZY” and threatened to cut the government contracts held by his businesses.
Musk, who runs electric vehicle maker Tesla, internet company Starlink and rocket company SpaceX, lambasted Trump’s centerpiece tax cuts and spending bill but also suggested Trump should be impeached and claimed without evidence that the government was concealing information about the president’s association with infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
“Look, it happens to everybody,” Vance said in the interview. “I’ve flown off the handle way worse than Elon Musk did in the last 24 hours.”
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Vance made the comments in an interview with “manosphere” comedian Theo Von, who last month joked about snorting drugs off a mixed-race baby and the sexuality of men in the U.S. Navy when he opened for Trump at a military base in Qatar.
The vice president told Von that as Musk for days was calling on social media for Congress to kill Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the president was “getting a little frustrated, feeling like some of the criticisms were unfair coming from Elon, but I think has been very restrained because the president doesn’t think that he needs to be in a blood feud with Elon Musk.”