President Donald Trump took a shot at Elon Musk for having a “really bad moment” in response to polling that found his former first buddy is the most disliked public figure in the U.S.
Just 33 percent of respondents to the Gallup poll had a positive opinion of Musk, while 61 percent had an unfavorable opinion of the billionaire.
Asked by a reporter about the poll on Wednesday—which prompted a laugh from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick— Trump responded, “I don’t know if the poll’s accurate. I think he’s a good person, and I think he had a bad moment, a really bad moment, but he’s a good person. I believe that.”
Trump failed to mention his own place high on the list of unpopular people, where he scored a net favorability rating of -16.
Key Trump officials also ranked poorly with the public in the Gallup poll. All of the Trump administration figures were less popular than Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Musk and Trump’s tumultuous relationship has been on public display since Musk’s departure from the Department of Government Efficiency in May, with Musk recently making waves by joining the chorus of voices asking Trump to follow through on his promise to release the Epstein files.
In response to Trump’s plea for his supporters to stop criticizing Attorney General Pam Bondi, Musk tweeted, “He said ‘Epstein’ half a dozen times while telling everyone to stop talking about Epstein,” adding, ”Just release the files as promised.”
Musk also questioned the theory, being advanced by Trump and others in his administration, that the Epstein files are a Democrat “hoax.”
After Trump doubled down on the hoax claim, Musk replied to a video of the president on X, “Wow, amazing that Epstein killed himself and Ghislaine is in federal prison for a hoax.”
Musk has also criticized the fact that “so many powerful people want that list suppressed,” and made a particularly big splash when he tweeted that Trump himself was in the Epstein files, and that was “the real reason they have not been made public.” Musk later deleted the post.
Trump had previously offered another olive branch to Musk late last month when he posted on Truth Social, “I want Elon, and all businesses within our Country, to THRIVE, in fact, THRIVE like never before!”
A month earlier, Musk made $15 million in donations to several Trump-related super PACs. Two days later, he tweeted that Trump’s budget bill would “destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!”
In a follow-up tweet, he pointed to polling that showed that the bill would be “political suicide” for the Republican Party.
Trump’s latest comments about Musk being a good person are a stark contrast from comments the president made in early June after Musk floated the idea of establishing his own political party.
In a Truth Social post, the president said he was “saddened” to see his former friend go “completely off the rails,” adding that Musk was “essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK.”
