Donald Trump and Elon Musk have used Charlie Kirk’s funeral to make amends after their nasty feud.
The president and the tech billionaire were seen shaking hands while sitting in a private box at the conservative activist’s funeral at State Farm Stadium in Arizona on Sunday. Trump had been talking to UFC CEO Dana White when Musk walked over and sat next to Trump.
The handshake ends months of tension that began when Musk posted on X in June that the real reason the Jeffrey Epstein files had not been released was because Trump featured in them.
On Sunday, Musk posted a photo of the pair seated next to each other on X, with the simple caption, “For Charlie.”
Katie Miller, a former DOGE staffer and wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, added a love heart emoticon under the post by her former boss.
Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, also posted a photo of the pair on its X account. Kirk’s widow, Erika, has been named as the new CEO and Chair of the Board for the conservative organization her husband co-founded in 2012.
As friends with both Trump and Musk, Kirk had long been hopeful the pair would heal their rift. “I think that at some point they’re going to reconcile,” he told Megyn Kelly in June. “I hope they reconcile. I think that they’re much stronger together, Elon’s already deleted those tweets.”
“I am hopeful, optimistic,” Kirk added. “I’m gonna do everything I possibly can to try and bring this back together. I hope these two titans can come together to keep trying to save America.”
After tapping Musk last November to launch his DOGE program, Trump soon became fast friends with the Tesla billionaire. Musk made several high-profile visits to the Oval Office as Trump kicked off his second administration.
However the pair fell out dramatically in May, after Musk was unhappy with the contents of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”
Every seat in this giant arena that isn’t roped off for security is packed to the ceiling. Honored to be here.All for Charlie Kirk. pic.twitter.com/NDK6sDuqLa
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 21, 2025
“This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” the Tesla CEO posted in June.
The week after leaving his role in the administration, Musk posted on his X platform that Trump “is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.” He later deleted the offending post, but the fallout went nuclear.
Musk even floated the idea of launching his own political party as an alternative to the Republicans and the Democrats, before going cold on the concept.
Trump seemed to be offering an olive branch to Musk earlier this month. Speaking on The Scott Jennings Show about their lapsed friendship, Trump claimed that while the 54-year-old was a “super-genius” in many ways, Musk still had his flaws.
The billionaire “got off the reservation incorrectly, and… he wished he didn’t do it,” Trump said, noting that Musk is “a good person.”
“He’s got 80 percent super-genius, and then 20 percent he’s got some problems,” Trump said. “When he works out the 20 percent, he’ll be great.”
Days after the Jennings interview, Trump invited a string of tech and AI CEOs for a White House summit, but not Musk.
Social media users wondered why the guest list-which included Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Apple CEO Tim Cook, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google CEO Sundar Pichai-did not include Musk as the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and the co-founder of both OpenAI and xAI
Musk posted on X, “I was invited, but unfortunately, I could not attend,” adding ”A representative of mine will be there.”
The post Trump Buries the Hatchet With Musk at Kirk Funeral After Bitter Split appeared first on The Daily Beast.
