Elon Musk may be back in Donald Trump’s good graces, but it hasn’t stopped the president from shaming his former “first buddy” in front of fellow billionaires and company executives.
Hours after the world’s richest man made his first public appearance in Washington since leaving the White House in May, Trump used a speech at a Saudi investment forum at the Kennedy Centre to poke fun at his former DOGE chief.
“You are so lucky I am with you Elon. Has he ever thanked me properly?” Trump said, as the crowd laughed.
The Tesla boss, who was seated in the front row alongside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, NVIDIA chief executive Jensen Huang and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, took the comment with good humor.
And after the forum, he did exactly as the president asked.
“I would like to thank President Trump for all he has done for America and the world,” Musk posted to his 229 million followers on X.
I would like to thank President Trump for all he has done for America and the world pic.twitter.com/KdK9VC2MLs
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2025
The investment forum was attended by executives from companies across the country, including Chevron, General Dynamics, Pfizer, IBM, Google, and Boeing.
Ahead of their epic breakup earlier this year, Musk had raged against Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which removed tax credits for buyers of electric vehicles such as Tesla cars.
But at the forum on Wednesday, the president talked up another part of the bill: tax deductions for interest paid on qualified new car loans.
“Elon would like to have it differently. A deduction only if you buy a Tesla, right?” Trump said.
“We will let it be for everybody. You get a deduction on the loan on your interest payment. I think that’s going to be an unbelievable boon to car sales. It’s one of the biggest things. We’ll see.”
Musk’s presence in Washington this week, where he was also of the guests at Trump’s swanky Tuesday night dinner for the Saudi crown prince, marks a new chapter for the pair after their extraordinary breakup.
Last month, Trump put the fallout down to Musk having “a bad moment” and revealed that they had spoken “on and off” since Charlie Kirk’s memorial after the activist was assassinated.
“It was a stupid moment in his life, I’m sure he’d tell you that, but I like Elon and I suspect I’ll always like him,” Trump said.
But that “bad moment” involved Musk branding Trump’s spending bill a “disgusting abomination”, declaring that Trump was in the Epstein Files and threatening to create a third party to thwart the GOP’s electoral chances.
At the dinner for the crown prince on Tuesday night, Trump greeted Musk with a tap on the torso as he entered the room.
Other guests at the dinner included Apple chief Tim Cook, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.
Soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, who has Trump’s son Barron as a “big fan,” was also there.
“This room is loaded up with the biggest leaders in the world, business, sports,” Trump said at the dinner.
The dinner and today’s forum came seven years after the Saudi crown prince was cast as an international pariah over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
The dual U.S. citizen was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul during Trump’s first administration, and his own CIA concluded that Salman ordered the assassination.
After rolling out the red carpet for the crown prince on Tuesday, Trump—whose family has numerous business ventures in Saudi Arabia—touted Salman’s human rights record and insisted he “knew nothing” about Khashoggi’s assassination.
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