White House Says Elon Musk Having ‘Unfortunate Episode’

The White House has brushed off Elon Musk’s attacks on President Donald Trump as an “unfortunate episode.”

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Newsweek on Thursday evening that the Tesla CEO and former close Trump ally was lashing out because he is “unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted.”

Why It Matters

The once-close relationship between Trump and Musk dramatically fell apart this week after the SpaceX CEO began criticizing the president’s “big, beautiful bill.”

Musk blasted the bill as “outrageous” and “pork-filled” in a post to X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday.

Trump initially avoided criticizing Musk, with Leavitt telling reporters earlier this week that “the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this.” But things came to a head on Thursday after Musk resumed his bill criticisms on his social media site.

What To Know

Musk and Trump’s very public spat began on Thursday afternoon after the president told reporters at the White House that he was “disappointed” in Musk.

File picture of Musk with Trump — Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, left, and then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump attend a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show on October 5, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Alex Brandon/AP

Trump also accused Musk of suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome” and suggested that he only objected to the “big, beautiful bill” because it removed the electric vehicle tax subsidies, which would hit Tesla’s bottom line.

“Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump wrote later on Truth Social.

Musk denied that the EV tax credits played a part in his objection to the bill, saying that he is unhappy about the trillions of dollars the fiscal plan would add to the national debt. The Congressional Budget Office recently predicted the bill would add $3 trillion of debt over the next decade.

The dispute rapidly escalated through Thursday, with Musk claiming that Trump would have lost the election without his support, and created a poll on X, asking if it was time to create a new political party in America “that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”

Musk also backed a post calling for Trump’s impeachment before saying the president is named in the files regarding Jeffrey Epstein, a sex offender and financier who in 2019 died by suicide in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.

Trump fired back that the “easiest way” for the government to save billions of dollars, rather than the cuts in his bill, or Musk’s federal spending reductions through the Department of Government Efficiency, was to “terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.”

After the fiery back-and-forth between the world’s richest man and the U.S. president, the White House attempted to lower the temperature on Thursday evening.

In a statement, Leavitt suggested that Trump was putting the drama behind him, and is “focused on passing this historic piece of legislation and making our country great again.”

What People Are Saying

Trump, on Thursday: “Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore. I was surprised. You were here. Everybody in this room practically was here as we had a wonderful send-off. He said wonderful things about me. You couldn’t have nicer-said the best things. He’s worn the hat. Trump was right about everything, and I am right about the ‘Great Big Beautiful Bill.'”

Musk, on X: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”

Musk later escalated the feud, adding: “Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”