President Trump received a phone call from Elon Musk late on Monday night, outreach that led to a public expression of regret by the billionaire early Wednesday for the attacks he had lodged against the president in their extraordinary public showdown last week, according to three people briefed on the conversation.
The call came after the tech entrepreneur spoke privately on Friday with Vice President JD Vance and the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, about a path to a truce. Ms. Wiles told associates she had come to like working with Mr. Musk and was one of his regular points of contact. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussions.
Those conversations paved the way for the strikingly chastened tone Mr. Musk struck in an X post early Wednesday, in which he wrote: “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.”
Representatives of Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Musk had spent several days signaling that he wanted to make up with the president after the two men engaged in a sharp series of personal attacks last Thursday that played out from the Oval Office and on social media.
What began as criticism by the tech billionaire of Mr. Trump’s signature domestic bill devolved into an exchange of insults that mounted throughout the day, as the president claimed he had not needed Mr. Musk’s help to get elected and Mr. Musk tried to link Mr. Trump to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The night after Mr. Musk spoke with Ms. Wiles and Mr. Vance, he deleted his social media posts suggesting that the Trump administration was withholding the release of government files about Mr. Epstein because they implicated the president.
It remains to be seen how Mr. Trump will handle the attempted rapprochement and whether the two men’s relationship can be restored.
In the wake of their showdown, Mr. Trump told advisers that he had no interest in talking to Mr. Musk, and was done with him, a sentiment he reiterated in interviews with reporters.
But behind the scenes, advisers from both camps worked to arrange a détente.
Mr. Musk did not intend to leave the White House in such a huff, according to people close to him, even after he criticized Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill as fiscally irresponsible.
But the president’s decision to withdraw his nomination of Jared Isaacman, a close Musk associate, to run NASA was a humiliating turn for Mr. Musk. Over the ensuing week, he began venting to friends, both in person and over text messages, about Mr. Isaacman’s defenestration. In the days since the blowup between the two men, several people close to Mr. Musk encouraged him to put an end to the fight, believing that he had overstepped.
Initially, Mr. Musk showed no signs of backing down from his confrontation with the president. On Friday, he replied to an X user who said he should apologize to Mr. Trump with: “What’s the apology for exactly?” Mr. Musk added that he would only apologize after “a full dump of the Epstein files.” (He later deleted that post.)
By Sunday, Mr. Musk was realigning himself with Mr. Trump, sharing a screenshot of one of Mr. Trump’s social media posts that criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom of California for his handling of the immigration protests in Los Angeles.
Both Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have a lot at stake in the relationship, but it was Mr. Musk who appeared more eager to make amends. Mr. Trump threatened to cancel billions of dollars’ worth of contracts that Mr. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, has with the federal government.
Mr. Musk is not without leverage, however. He is the biggest donor in Republican politics and had promised to give an additional $100 million to Mr. Trump’s outside groups ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. He also has extensive knowledge of the inner dynamics of the administration, and Mr. Trump has been keen to avoid a repeat of his first term, when former aides left on bad terms and went on to write books about their experiences or become witnesses in some of his legal entanglements.
Mr. Trump almost never apologizes. One rare exception came in 2018, when he privately expressed regret to Prime Minister Teresa May of Britain for critical remarks he had made about her in an interview that published as she was about to honor him, according to a person with knowledge of what took place.
For his part, Mr. Musk has at times shown contrition for his scorched-earth tactics on social media. In 2018, he apologized to a British cave expert after calling him a “pedo guy” on Twitter. In 2023, shortly after buying the social media company, he apologized for saying an employee whom he had let go was using a disability as an “excuse.”
Ryan Mac, Kate Conger and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
Jonathan Swan is a White House reporter for The Times, covering the administration of Donald J. Trump. Contact him securely on Signal: @jonathan.941
Theodore Schleifer is a Times reporter covering billionaires and their impact on the world.
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