Donald Trump has said Elon Musk has “lost his mind”, according to US media, as the White House reveals the president is not interested in speaking to him.
In a phone interview with ABC News, the US president was asked about reports that a phone call was scheduled on Friday between Musk and himself.
“You mean the man who has lost his mind?” he is said to have responded.
A White House official has said Mr Trump is not interested in talking to his former ally amid a bitter feud between the two, adding that no phone call is planned for the day.
It comes as a source familiar with the situation has told Sky News the president is considering selling his Tesla, in a further sign that no resolution to the explosive bust-up is in sight.
Mr Trump purchased a Tesla earlier this year, describing the company as Elon’s “baby”.
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In a dangerous world, the explosive Trump-Musk bust-up is more terrifying than titillating
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Trump and Musk’s extraordinary spat minute-by-minute
The pair’s relationship broke down publicly on Thursday, just days after Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk left his role as a special government employee.
In a fiery exchange, Musk posted a series of messages on X criticising the president’s signature tax bill as a “big ugly spending bill”.
President Trump posted on Truth Social that Musk had been “wearing thin” and claimed he “asked him to leave” his government position, something Musk denied.
Elon Musk then hit back, alleging the president “is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.”
He gave no evidence for the claim, and it was dismissed by the White House.
In a statement, it called the bust-up an “unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted.”
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Musk says Trump appears in Epstein files as row explodes
The extraordinary spat minute-by-minute
The big, beautiful bust-up everyone knew was coming
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The bill at the centre of the spat was passed by the House Republicans in May and has been described by the president as a “big, beautiful bill”.
The president said to reporters in the White House on Thursday that Musk “knew the inner workings of the bill better than anybody sitting here”.
“He had no problem with it. All of a sudden, he had a problem and he only developed the problem when he found out we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate.”
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Musk then denied this, saying: “False, this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!”
The spat hit Tesla shares, which closed down 14.3% on Thursday, losing about $150bn (£111bn) in value.
Musk also said SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft “immediately” after Mr Trump threatened to cancel government contracts with Musk’s businesses.
Hours after issuing his threat, however, Musk heeded advice from X users telling him to “cool down” and posted: “Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon”.
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The row between two of the most powerful men in America comes a week after Musk left his position in the government, where he spearheaded a controversial cost-cutting department, DOGE – the Department of Government Efficiency.
