US President Donald Trump said over the weekend that he will “always like” Elon Musk, despite their public fallout in recent months.
The comments come as Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, criticized on X Sean Duffy, who was nominated by Trump as NASA’s acting administrator in July.
Duffy announced earlier this month that NASA would reopen the Artemis III contract to competition, citing delays in SpaceX’s Starship development.
In response, Musk criticized his qualifications and intelligence, suggesting he has a “2-digit IQ,” and has repeatedly referred to him as “Sean Dummy” in X posts over the past few weeks.
Duffy’s proposal to integrate NASA into the Department of Transportation has also faced pushback. “Sean Dummy is trying to kill NASA,” Musk wrote on X, reacting to the proposal.
Donald Trump has confessed, speaking with reporters on board Air Force One, that things are “good with him,” referring to Musk.
Remembering that “during Charlie’s beautiful tribute, Elon came up,” the President noted, “it’s good with him. I like Elon, I’ve always liked Elon.”
In late September, Elon Musk was seen seated next to Donald Trump at Kirk’s memorial, the first public appearance of the two together since May — when Musk stepped down from his special role at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The encounter fueled speculation about whether the two might repair their ties.
By then, Musk posted a picture of himself and Trump together, captioned: “For Charlie.”
Earlier that month, the Tesla CEO said on X he had been invited to a tech leader summit at the White House, which he couldn’t attend.
“I was invited, but unfortunately could not attend. A representative of mine will be there,” Musk wrote then.
Saying that the two have been “on and off, a little bit, very little,” Trump added that the Tesla CEO is “a nice guy and he’s a very capable guy.”
Soon after Elon Musk left his role at DOGE, his criticism of Trump’s policies regarding the auto market began surfacing.
This happened as the President’s “big, beautiful bill” was presented, introducing the end of incentives on clean energy and electric vehicles — which affected Tesla, as a manufacturer of both.
By then, as a public feud broke out between the President and the executive, Musk took on X to accuse Trump of being in the Jeffrey Epstein files.
“Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files,” Musk wrote in June. “That is the real reason they have not been made public.”
The post has since been deleted. “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far,” Musk wrote a week later.
By then, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was “saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks.”
The US President now reaffirmed over the weekend that this was just a “stupid moment” in the CEO’s life.
“He had a bad spell, he had a bad period, he had a bad moment,” the President stated. “It was a stupid moment in his life, very stupid. I’m sure he’d tell you that.”
In late July, the President had reassured that he did not want to “destroy” Elon Musk’s companies, reacting to the Tesla CEO’s warning of “rough quarters” ahead of the US incentives expiry.
“Everyone is stating that I will destroy Elon’s companies by taking away some, if not all, of the large scale subsidies he receives from the US Government,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This is not so!”
