President Donald Trump was left emotional after his “first buddy,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk, engaged in a bitter online feud with him last week, an insider revealed.
“The president was actually hurt,” a Trump confidant who spoke with him about their spat told Axios. “Yes, he has feelings, and he was hurt the way anyone would be when a friend turns on them.”
In public, Trump appears to be projecting a defiant front amid the feud. He signaled Saturday that his relationship with Musk was finished and that he had no intention of patching things up.
The president’s epic falling out with Musk was sparked by a fiery clash over Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Musk blasted the proposed spending package as fiscally reckless and a “disgusting abomination” that would sabotage his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by adding trillions to the deficit.
He even went as far as to post a bombshell claim on X that Trump is named in the so-called “Epstein files.”
But after the explosive allegations, Musk made a groveling U-turn on Wednesday morning. “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far,” he wrote.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
Meanwhile, White House insiders told Axios that Trump’s response to the Los Angeles protests against actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have helped Trump bounce back from the Musk meltdown.
“But that’s gone now. L.A. wiped away the Elon drama,” the source said. “What’s driving the president is how the riots of 2020 are seared into his brain, and how he wished he could’ve sent in the troops to end it.”
Musk, who had once enjoyed a cozy relationship with Trump as he headed DOGE, has been doing damage control amid the protests, resharing Trump’s Truth Social posts about the riots and posts by Vice President JD Vance, likely in a bid to show some solidarity with the president.
Trump unleashed his presidential powers in a dramatic showdown with California Gov. Gavin Newsom over the weekend, moving to federalize the state’s National Guard in a rare and controversial move. Protests erupted in downtown Los Angeles amid reports that detainees were being held in the basement of a federal building. ICE has denied these claims.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Northern Command told The New York Times that some 700 Marines are expected to be deployed to the streets of Los Angeles on Wednesday, joining National Guard troops already on the ground.
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