Musk signals potential softening of feud with simple one emoji response to clip of Trump wishing him well
President Trump's relationship with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, which appeared to publicly blow up last week as the two feuded in public, took a softer tone on Monday when Musk responded to a clip of the president on X.
"We had a great relationship and I wish him well — very well, actually," Trump said on Monday in a clip that was posted by conservative influencer ALX.
Musk responded to that post with a heart emoji on Monday evening.
Earlier in the day, Fox News Digital reported that the public spat between the two billionaires appeared to be losing steam after Musk seemingly issued support from Trump's handling of the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles.
Timeline: Inside The Evolving Relationship Between Trump And Musk From First Term To This Week's Fallout
"Governor Gavin Newscum and 'Mayor' Bass should apologize to the people of Los Angeles for the absolutely horrible job that they've done, and this now includes the ongoing L.A. riots," Trump said late Sunday in the post Musk shared. "These are not protesters, they are troublemakers and insurrectionists."
Read On The Fox News App
Additionally, Musk also re-posted one of Vice President JD Vance's posts on X about the riots.
"This moment calls for decisive leadership," Vance said, sharing a screenshot of a post from Trump about how his administration would address the riots. "The president will not tolerate rioting and violence."
Musk also appeared to post a self-deprecating joke about himself on X on Sunday which many interpreted to be a veiled reference to the fallout with Trump.
"It's outrageous how much character assassination has been directed at me, especially by me!" Musk posted.
While speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said that he was "very disappointed" by Musk's vocal criticisms of the bill. The president claimed that Musk knew what was in the bill and "had no problem" with it until the EV incentives had to be cut.
On X, Musk called that assessment "false."
Trump turned to social media to criticize Musk, who he appointed to find ways to cut $2 trillion after forming the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Trump Warns Of 'Serious Consequences' If Elon Musk Funds Democrats
"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 said in one post.
In another post, Trump said, "I don't mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago. This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress. It's a Record Cut in Expenses, $1.6 Trillion Dollars, and the Biggest Tax Cut ever given."
"If this Bill doesn't pass, there will be a 68% tax increase, and things far worse than that. I didn't create this mess, I'm just here to FIX IT. This puts our Country on a Path of Greatness. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
At one point, Musk referenced late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in relation to Trump as part of the larger tirade in a comment that several Republicans told Fox News Digital went "too far."
Musk deleted that post days later.
Other posts from Musk included a claim that Trump would not have won the election without his help while accusing Trump of "ingratitude." In another post, Musk suggested that Trump should be impeached and replaced by Vice President Vance.
Trump told Fox News on Friday that he isn't interested in talking to Musk, adding that "Elon's totally lost it."
Trump also said to Fox News' Bret Baier that he isn't worried about Musk's suggestion to form a new political party, citing favorable polls and strong support from Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Fox News Digital's Diana Stancy contributed to this reportOriginal article source: Musk signals potential softening of feud with simple one emoji response to clip of Trump wishing him well
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump's Vetting Official Hasn't Been Fully Vetted for His Own Security Clearance
President Donald Trump's man in charge of vetting staff has not yet been fully vetted himself for a security clearance five months into the second Trump administration. Sergio Gor is the director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. He is tasked with vetting thousands of executive branch employees. However, Gor has not yet submitted paperwork on his own background for a permanent clearance, according to a report from the New York Post which cited multiple sources. Gor's office is responsible for assessing candidates for approximately 4,000 political appointees including recruiting and screening candidates as well as dealing with security clearances and conflicts of interests. Some 1,600 of the positions require Senate confirmation. The powerful Trump aide has yet to turn in his Standard Form 86, or SF-86, the more than 100-page background investigation form required for a security clearance, three administration sources said. The extensive form covers citizenship, employment history, relatives, foreign contacts and travel, financial activities, drug use and more. Gor, 38, is reportedly from Malta. However, an official there could not confirm his birthplace, and Gor declined to provide it to the Post besides to say it was not Russia. Gor is a close MAGA ally of Trump and his son Don Jr. with whom he co-founded Winning Team Publishing in 2021. The top Trump aide also once worked as a booker for Fox News and as a spokesperson for Sen. Rand Paul. He also served as officiant and DJ at Matt Gaetz's wedding in 2021, according to Vanity Fair. While his work largely takes place behind the scenes at the White House, Gor made headlines earlier this month for being the person behind the move to withdraw Jared Isaacman's nomination to lead NASA and clashing with While he does not have a permanent security clearance, the Trump staffer does have an interim security clearance. Gor opposed the use of the SF-86 during the presidential transition and was concerned with Trump picks being weeded out by the 'deep state.' A source told the Post that he was 'actively working to convince everyone' that the form wasn't necessary and Trump could provide the clearance through executive authority. A White House official claimed Gor had completed the form and noted his interim clearance, which is given while background checks are completed. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the Post of 'engaging in baseless gossip.' White House counsel David Warrington also told the Post that Gor is 'fully compliant with all applicable ethical and legal security clearance is active, any insinuation he doesn't maintain a clearance is false.'
Yahoo
37 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Musk Savages ‘Snake' Trump Aide as Their White House Feud Erupts
Elon Musk publicly ripped into a top White House aide who fueled his falling out with President Donald Trump. Tensions had already been building between Musk and Trump before the SpaceX chief left the White House. Things got ugly, however, after Sergio Gor, the director of the presidential personnel office, encouraged Trump to rescind his nomination for Jared Isaacman—Musk's personal friend—to lead NASA. The New York Post revealed this week that even though Gor is in charge of vetting thousands of executive branch employees, he himself hasn't been fully vetted. Five months into the second Trump administration, he hasn't even submitted the paperwork for his own permanent security clearance. 'He's a snake,' Musk wrote on his social media platform X late Wednesday in response to the Post's report. According to the Post, Gor, 38, developed a grudge against Musk, 53, after the Tesla chief—who as head of the government cost-cutting task force DOGE was a de facto member of Trump's Cabinet—'humiliated' him in front of other Cabinet members for not staffing the administration quickly enough. 'Sergio was upset about Elon dressing him down at the meeting and said he was going to 'get him,'' a source told the paper. At the time, Musk and Trump were still on friendly terms, but Gor was openly gleeful whenever Tesla stock plunged, according to the report. After Musk's special government employee status expired, forcing him to leave the White House, Gor reportedly got his revenge on Musk by convincing Trump to pull Isaacman's nomination just days before the Senate was scheduled to vote on the appointment. The administration blamed the move on Isaacman's previous donations to Democrats, but the billionaire financial technology executive said he didn't think that was the real reason, considering his donation history had long been in the public domain. After the nomination was pulled, Musk—who poured more than $250 million into the president's re-election campaign—began publicly trying to tank the president's flagship 'big beautiful' budget bill. Surprisingly little is known about Gor, including his birthplace, according to the Post. He declined to tell the paper where he was born, except to say that it wasn't Russia. It's previously been reported that he was born in Malta, but an official there couldn't confirm that information, the paper said. Together with Donald Trump Jr., Gor co-founded a publishing company that published several of Trump's books following the end of President Trump's first term, according to the New York Times. In a statement to the Daily Beast, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, 'Sergio Gor is a trusted adviser to President Trump and he has played a critical role in helping President Trump staff the most talented administration in history.' Gor's office is responsible for assessing candidates for about 4,000 political appointees, including handling security clearances and conflicts of interest. Gor, however, has yet to turn in Standard Form 86, the 100-page background investigation form required for a security clearance, according to the Post. The form covers citizenship, employment history, relatives, foreign contacts and travel, financial activities, drug use, and more. Despite three sources saying otherwise, a White House official claimed Gor had completed the SF-86 form and noted that he has an interim security clearance, which is given while background checks are completed. Leavitt accused the Post of 'engaging in baseless gossip.'
San Francisco Chronicle
40 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Vance blames California Dems for violent immigration protests and calls Sen. Alex Padilla 'Jose'
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Vice President JD Vance on Friday accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of encouraging violent immigration protests as he used his appearance in Los Angeles to rebut criticism from state and local officials that the Trump administration fueled the unrest by sending in federal officers. Vance also referred to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, the state's first Latino senator, as 'Jose Padilla,' a week after the Democrat was forcibly taken to the ground by officers and handcuffed after speaking out during a Los Angeles news conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on immigration raids. 'I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question,' Vance said, in an apparent reference to the altercation at Noem's event. 'I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn't a theater. And that's all it is.' 'They want to be able to go back to their far-left groups and to say, 'Look, me, I stood up against border enforcement. I stood up against Donald Trump,'' Vance added. A spokesperson for Padilla, Tess Oswald, noted in a social media post that Padilla and Vance were formerly colleagues in the Senate and said that Vance should know better. 'He should be more focused on demilitarizing our city than taking cheap shots,' Oswald said. Vance's visit to Los Angeles to tour a multiagency Federal Joint Operations Center and a mobile command center came as demonstrations calmed down in the city and a curfew was lifted this week. That followed over a week of sometimes-violent clashes between protesters and police and outbreaks of vandalism and looting that followed immigration raids across Southern California. Trump's dispatching of his top emissary to Los Angeles at a time of turmoil surrounding the Israel-Iran war and the U.S.'s future role in it signals the political importance Trump places on his hard-line immigration policies. Vance echoed the president's harsh rhetoric toward California Democrats as he sought to blame them for the protests in the city. 'Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, by treating the city as a sanctuary city, have basically said that this is open season on federal law enforcement,' Vance said after he toured federal immigration enforcement offices. 'What happened here was a tragedy,' Vance added. 'You had people who were doing the simple job of enforcing the law and they had rioters egged on by the governor and the mayor, making it harder for them to do their job. That is disgraceful. And it is why the president has responded so forcefully.' Newsom's spokesperson Izzy Gardon said in a statement, 'The Vice President's claim is categorically false. The governor has consistently condemned violence and has made his stance clear.' In a statement on X, Newsom responded to Vance's reference to 'Jose Padilla,' saying the comment was no accident. Jose Padilla also is the name of a convicted al-Qaida terrorism plotter during President George W. Bush's administration, who was sentenced to two decades in prison. Padilla was arrested in 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport during the tense months after the 9/11 attacks and accused of the 'dirty bomb' mission. It later emerged through U.S. interrogation of other al-Qaida suspects that the 'mission' was only a sketchy idea, and those claims never surfaced in the South Florida terrorism case. Responding to the outrage, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokesperson for Vance, said of the vice president: 'He must have mixed up two people who have broken the law.' Federal immigration authorities have been ramping up arrests across the country to fulfill Trump's promise of mass deportations. Todd Lyons, the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has defended his tactics against criticism that authorities are being too heavy-handed. The friction in Los Angeles began June 6, when federal agents conducted a series of immigration sweeps in the region that have continued since. Amid the protests and over the objections of state and local officials, Trump ordered the deployment of roughly 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to the second-largest U.S. city, home to 3.8 million people. Trump has said that without the military's involvement, Los Angeles 'would be a crime scene like we haven't seen in years.' Newsom has depicted the military intervention as the onset of a much broader effort by Trump to overturn political and cultural norms at the heart of the nation's democracy. Earlier Friday, Newsom urged Vance to visit victims of the deadly January wildfires while in Southern California and talk with Trump, who earlier this week suggested his feud with the governor might influence his consideration of $40 billion in federal wildfire aid for California. 'I hope we get that back on track,' Newsom wrote on X. 'We are counting on you, Mr. Vice President.' ___ Associated Press writers Julie Watson and Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles and Tran Nguyen in Sacramento contributed to this report.
