President Donald Trump has revealed he was “amazed” Elon Musk endorsed him to become president, given his longstanding plans to scrap electric vehicle subsidies.
One week after their nuclear breakup, Trump also softened significantly on his former First Buddy, describing him on Thursday as a “friend of mine” who “got a bit strange” in recent weeks.
The president made his comments during a signing ceremony at the White House in which he quashed plans by California Governor Gavin Newsom to phase out gas-guzzling cars by 2035 in order to encourage more people to buy EVs.
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Speaking to a room full of Cabinet members and auto-industry chiefs, Trump repeated his claim that Musk had turned on him because the so-called “big, beautiful bill” would kill most credits for electric vehicles at the end of the year, disqualifying Teslas from a $7500 incentive created under the Biden administration.
But Trump told the audience that Musk always knew he wanted to scrap the EV policies of the Biden administration, yet never told him it was a problem until their social media blow-up last week.
“I used to say I’m amazed that he’s endorsing me because that can’t be good for him; I’m abolishing the EV mandate,” Trump recalled.
“And I once asked him about it… and he said, ‘Well, as long as it’s happening to everybody, I’ll be able to compete’."
“It was really strange, you know. I’m with him, he’s a friend of mine and he makes electric cars, and we’re saying ‘you’re not going to be… forced to make all of those cars… And that’s what he said: ‘As long as I’m on the same plane as everyone else, we’re going to do good and make a better product. I said that’s very cool.
“After that, he got a little bit strange,” Trump added, prompting a few laughs.
The remarks came days after the president and the world’s richest man traded barbs over everything from who should get credit for Trump’s election victory to whether the government should keep Musk’s SpaceX contracts.
But things took an ugly turn when Musk told his 220-million plus followers on X that Trump was named in the files of child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, prompting a swift MAGA backlash.
He has since apologised to the president, both publicly and privately, and deleted several of the tweets attacking him.
“I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far,” Musk wrote on X this week.
