President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he believed his relationship with Elon Musk was over after the two sparred publicly on social media this week, and he warned there would be “serious consequences” if Mr. Musk financed candidates to run against Republicans who voted in favor of the president’s domestic policy bill.
Trump said he had no plans to speak with Mr. Musk, calling the tech billionaire “disrespectful” to the office of the president. When asked whether he had any desire to repair his relationship with Musk, Trump said, “No.”
But this seemed unlikely to be the president’s final word on the matter.
Despite saying repeatedly over the past 24 hours that he is spending no time thinking about Mr. Musk, Mr. Trump has taken numerous phone calls and questions from reporters in which he has expounded on their relationship. On an Air Force One flight to New Jersey on Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump spent time in his cabin watching Fox News coverage of his feud with Mr. Musk, before walking to the back cabin to answer questions from reporters on the topic.
Trump has offered a range of views in his conversations over the past few days. In some, Trump has described Musk as somebody who has gone “crazy.” In others, he has expressed sympathy, as if Musk were a wayward son. He has told associates that Musk is out of his mind on drugs, but at other times he has said he wishes him well and has seemed to leave open the possibility of reconciliation. He has also dangled the threat of canceling contracts that Musk’s companies have with the federal government.
Behind the scenes, people close to both men have tried to broker a détente and there have been some signs of de-escalation. Musk has deleted some of his most incendiary social media posts and Trump has been more restrained, by his standards, in his public criticisms of Mr. Musk.
Advisers to Trump say they think the relationship will never be the same again. But some forecast an eventual truce, albeit one based on the transactional aspect of their relationship, with both men recognizing their abilities to help and harm each other.
Trump has the power to boost or cripple Mr. Musk’s businesses, especially his rocket company SpaceX, which relies on federal contracts.
And Musk has his own leverage. He was given a window into Trump’s private world, and some of Trump’s advisers have expressed concern about him weaponizing those secrets. He is the biggest donor in Republican politics, has an outstanding promise of a $100 million donation to Trump’s outside groups, and owns the most powerful social media platform on the right.
Mr. Trump has a long history of reconciling with even his harshest critics. Mr. Musk’s cryptic accusation that Mr. Trump had links to a convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, might seem to the uninitiated to be a bridge too far, but the senior ranks of the Trump administration government are filled with people who have made withering character assessments of Mr. Trump. They include his secretary of state, who called him a con man, and his vice president, who wondered whether he would be an American Hitler.
In a podcast appearance with the comedian Theo Von, recorded on Thursday during the height of the Musk-Trump online war, Vice President JD Vance went relatively easy on the world’s richest man.
“Elon, he’s an incredible entrepreneur,” Mr. Vance said. “And look, man, I’m always going to be loyal to the president, and I hope that eventually Elon kind of comes back into the fold.”
Mr. Vance praised Mr. Musk’s work with the Department of Government Efficiency, empathized with his frustrations with the political process in Washington, and noted that “his businesses are being attacked nonstop.”
“I just think it’s a huge mistake for the world’s wealthiest man, I think one of the most transformational entrepreneurs ever, that’s Elon, to be at this war with the world’s most powerful man,” Mr. Vance said.
The vice president said Mr. Trump “has been very restrained, because the president doesn’t think that he needs to be in a blood feud with Elon Musk, and I actually think if Elon chilled out a little bit, everything would be fine.” Though Mr. Vance did note that might not be possible after Mr. Von showed him some of Mr. Musk’s more personal attacks on X, and he forcefully rejected Mr. Musk’s accusation that Mr. Trump had a nefarious relationship with Mr. Epstein.
Mr. Musk, who poured millions of dollars into the Trump campaign last year, spearheaded a massive government restructuring project in recent months, cutting thousands of federal jobs before he returned to running his businesses last week.
His vociferous opposition to the president’s bill, expressed on social media, touched off the two men’s dispute on Thursday. But he has since removed his most incendiary social media posts about Mr. Trump, notably his accusation that the Trump administration was blocking the release of information about Mr. Epstein because the files somehow implicated the president, who had been a friend of Mr. Epstein’s for years before falling out with him. Mr. Musk did not provide evidence for the claim.
Another of Mr. Musk’s deleted posts was a vow that his company SpaceX would decommission its Dragon spacecraft, which NASA has used to transport crew to the International Space Station. That comment came in response to a post by Mr. Trump on Truth Social that he could save the government billions of dollars by canceling Mr. Musk’s federal contracts.
Mr. Trump was asked on the Air Force One flight to New Jersey on Friday how seriously he was considering canceling Mr. Musk’s contracts. He did not rule it out.
“He’s got a lot of money. He gets a lot of subsidy, so we’ll take a look at that,” Mr. Trump said. “Only if it’s fair for him and for the country, I would certainly think about it. But it has to be fair.”
On that same flight, he also avoided attacking Mr. Musk when pressed by reporters and said he wished him and his companies well.
But by Saturday morning, he was back to criticizing Mr. Musk.
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