United States President Donald Trump has warned billionaire former ally Elon Musk against funding Democratic candidates in the country’s 2026 midterm elections as the pair’s volcanic break-up continued to play out on the world stage.
“He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,” Trump told US network NBC News in an interview published Saturday, without spelling out what the repercussions might be for the tech mogul, whose businesses benefit from lucrative US federal contracts.
Trump aides, various Republicans, and key wealthy donors to the GOP have urged the two to temper the bitter feud and make peace, fearing irreparable political and economic fallout.
But, asked whether he thought his relationship with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO was over, Trump said, “I would assume so, yeah”.
The interview featured Trump’s most extensive comments yet on the spectacular bust-up that saw Musk criticising his signature tax and spending bill as an “abomination”, tensions escalating after he went on to highlight one-time links between the president and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
By Saturday morning, Musk had deleted his “big bomb” allegation that Trump featured in unreleased government files on former associates of Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges.
“That is the real reason they have not been made public,” he said in Thursday’s post on X.
The Trump administration has acknowledged it is reviewing tens of thousands of documents, videos, and investigative material that his “MAGA” movement says will unmask public figures complicit in Epstein’s crimes.
Trump was named in a trove of deposition and statements linked to Epstein that were unsealed by a New York judge in early 2024. The president has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but he had a long and well-publicised friendship with Epstein.
Trump has denied spending time on Little Saint James, the private redoubt in the US Virgin Islands where prosecutors alleged Epstein trafficked underage girls for sex.
Just last week, Trump had given Musk a glowing send-off as he left his cost-cutting role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Vice President JD Vance said Musk was making a “huge mistake” going after Trump, though he also tried to downplay his attacks as the frustrations of an “emotional guy”.
“I hope that eventually Elon comes back into the fold. Maybe that’s not possible now because he’s gone so nuclear,” he said in the interview with comedian Theo Von, released Friday.
Trump also told NBC that it was the Department of Justice, rather than he, that had decided to return Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the US, where he faces charges of transporting undocumented migrants inside the country.
Trump added that he had not spoken to El Salvador President Nayib Bukele about Abrego Garcia’s return.
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