Donald Trump took an awkward dig at his “first buddy” Elon Musk just days after the billionaire left the White House.
The president was speaking in front of graduating students at the University of Alabama on Thursday when he boasted that the Tesla CEO—and his Silicon Valley colleagues—have started “kissing my a–.”
He made the comments during a wide-ranging speech in which he offered advice and received raucous cheers while describing his actions to crack down on transgender women in sports.
But it was during a moment the president was talking about fixing a “broken system” when he took an unexpected dig at his DOGE pal.
“Change is never easy, and the closer you get to success, the more ferociously those with a vested interest in the past will resist you they want to resist,” Trump began.
“You have to break the system a little bit and follow your own instincts. But if your vision is right, nothing will hold you down, nothing. You have to have the right vision.”
Trump then boasted about the types of “internet people” who vehemently opposed him during his first term who now support him—naming one billionaire in particular.
“If you look at some of these internet people, I know so many of them. Elon is so terrific, but I know now all of them, you know, they all hated me in my first term, and now they’re kissing my a–,” Trump said.
“You know… it’s true. All of them. It’s true,” the president added.
Musk and Trump had publicly dissed each other years before their current partnership.
In 2022, the pair clashed after Musk suggested that Trump was too old to become the next U.S. president and that he needed to “sail into the sunset.”
Trump fought back, claiming Musk would have gotten on his knees and “begged” for help.
“When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless and tell me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it,” Trump wrote.
The pair eventually grew close, and while Trump generally speaks fondly of Musk, he has mocked him in months past.
“Elon won’t go home. I can’t get rid of him,” Trump said in November 2024. “Until I don’t like him.”
That moment seems to have come, with Musk packing up his working space at the White House and moving his focus back to his floundering automaker Tesla this week.
“Instead of meeting with him in person, I’m talking to him on the phone, but it’s the same net effect,” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told the New York Post in an interview discussing the Trump administration’s first 100 days.
“He’s not out of it altogether. He’s just not physically present as much as he was,” Wiles said.
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