US President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Elon Musk in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025, in Washington. Photo: VCG

The highly publicized feud between US President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk has attracted widespread media attention, marking a sharp rupture in their previously close alliance, with some outlets, including Reuters and The Wall Street Journal highlighting its potential financial impact and political fallout.

Trump and Musk traded barbs over the Trump administration's sweeping tax cuts and spending bill on Thursday, a week after Musk left the administration. The so-called "Big and Beautiful Bill" is part of Trump's core agenda and includes a series of economic measures such as eliminating tax credits for electric vehicle consumers, increasing investment in border security, and lowering corporate and personal tax rates, according to the Xinhua News Agency. 

Musk has been fiercely criticizing the bill in recent days. On Thursday, he called it a "mountain of disgusting pork" on social media.

Trump, publicly addressing Musk's latest attacks on his signature tax bill for the first time, said he was disappointed in his former White House adviser and suggested that the Tesla chief executive Musk was suffering from "Trump derangement syndrome." Musk, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help get Trump re-elected, shot back in real time on social media that the president was ungrateful and wouldn't be sitting in the Oval Office without his support, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Trump on Thursday also called Musk "CRAZY" and threatened to cut his companies' government contracts as the two men feuded over the bill, CNBC reported. "The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. "I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!" according to the CNBC report.

The New York Times noted that four hours into the shootout, a peacekeeper emerged in the form of Kanye West. "Broooos please noooooo," he posted on X with an emoji of two people hugging. "We love you both so much."

According to Politico, "signs of a truce are emerging in the increasingly bitter clash" between the two.

Trump projected an air of nonchalance in an interview Thursday with Politico during a day of sparring over social media with Musk. Separately, White House aides, after working to persuade the president to temper his public criticism of Musk to avoid escalation, scheduled a call Friday with Musk to broker a peace, according to Politico.

"Oh it's okay," Trump told Politico in a brief telephone call when asked about the very public breakup with his onetime megabacker. "It's going very well, never done better," Politico reported.

However, according to Reuters, Trump is not interested in talking with Musk, a White House official said on Friday, adding that no phone call between the two men was planned for the day.

A separate White House official had said earlier that Trump and Musk were going to talk to each other on Friday, according to the Reuters report. 

Wide attention 

When asked to comment on the public row between Trump and Musk, and whether China expects it to affect China-US relations, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on Friday that "This is a domestic affair of the US."

Various media outlets have provided continuous coverage of the row between Trump and Musk, with some outlets, including CNN and CNBC, creating timelines charting their relationship from "bromance to bitter feud."

The Wall Street Journal said that the "long-simmering tensions between Trump and Musk" that burst into the open signal "the rupturing of a relationship that had been one of the most consequential in modern American politics." It also noted that the "feud could have serious consequences for both Trump and Musk."

Tesla shares rose on Friday as investors took some comfort from White House aides scheduling a call with Musk to broker a peace after the public feud with Trump. The electric carmaker's shares were up around 5 percent in Frankfurt on Friday, having closed down 14.3 percent on Thursday in New York, losing about $150 billion in market value, according to Reuters.

The New York Times said in a report on Thursday that because Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk are each the masters of their own social media platform, neither one was directly replying to the other. 

According to media reports, the public row in the US has also drawn attention in Europe. Politico reported that the "Trump-Musk meltdown gets Europe gloating," noting that European politicians were indulging in an emotion they hadn't recently felt toward Washington: Schadenfreude - taking joy in someone else's troubles. 

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski wrote on X, "See, big man, politics is harder than you thought." The jab was directed squarely at Musk, who had previously called Sikorski a "small man" during a war of words on X in March, Politico noted.

Musk is "very welcome" in Europe, a spokesperson for the European Commission quipped Friday, according to AFP.

The Washington Post on Friday cited several of Musk's friends as saying that the war of words taking place between the two men represented not just a personal falling out but also the public surfacing of a fight between the tech right and the populist MAGA movement, which share some goals but disagree deeply on several issues. 

"It was a rejection by MAGA and Congress of technocratic reform and instead keeping basically the status quo on everything of consequence," one of the people said. The person acknowledged that Musk came to Washington with high hopes that he could orchestrate systematic change, but instead was stuck with high tariffs and a bill that would leave the country with spiraling debt. "Total loss," the person added, according to The Washington Post.