Trump says Musk could face serious consequences if he backs opposition
US President Donald Trump on Saturday made clear he was not interested in repairing the relationship with his former ally and campaign benefactor Elon Musk, warning Musk could face 'serious consequences' if he tries to back the opposition.
In a phone interview with NBC's Kristen Welker, Trump said that he has no intention of reconciling with Musk. And, when asked specifically if he thought his relationship with the mega-billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX was over, Trump responded, 'I would assume so, yeah.'
'I'm too busy doing other things,' Trump continued. 'You know, I won an election in a landslide. I gave him a lot of breaks long before this happened. I gave him breaks in my first administration and saved his life in my first administration. I have no intention of speaking to him.'
The US president also issued a warning amid chatter that Musk could back Democratic lawmakers and candidates in the 2026 midterm elections.
'If he does, he'll have to pay the consequences for that,' Trump told NBC, though he declined to share what those consequences would be. Musk's businesses have many lucrative federal contracts.
The latest comes after a spectacular fallout in the relationship between the most powerful man in the world and the world's wealthiest man over Trump's budget bill that Musk began to criticise on his social media platform X earlier in the week.
Musk warned that the bill would increase the federal deficit and called it a 'disgusting abomination.'
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the bill would slash spending and taxes but also leave some 10.9 million more people without health insurance and spike deficits by $2.4 trillion over the decade.
On Thursday, Trump criticised Musk's strong reaction to his 'big beautiful bill' pending before Congress, and before long, he and Musk began trading bitter personal attacks on social media, sending the White House and GOP congressional leaders scrambling to assess the fallout.
As the back-and-forth intensified, Musk suggested Trump should be impeached and claimed without evidence that the government was concealing information about the president's association with infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, a claim the Tesla boss appeared to have walked back when he deleted his posts about Epstein on Saturday.
Speaking in an interview with ' manosphere' comedian Theo Von, US Vice President JD Vance tried to downplay the feud. He said Musk was making a 'huge mistake' going after Trump, calling him an 'emotional guy' getting frustrated.
'I hope that eventually Elon comes back into the fold. Maybe that's not possible now because he's gone so nuclear,' Vance said.
Vance called Musk an 'incredible entrepreneur said that Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, which sought to cut government spending and laid off or pushed out thousands of workers, was 'really good.'
The US Vice President said the bill's central goal was not to cut spending but to extend the 2017 tax cuts approved in Trump's first term.
'It's a good bill,' Vance said. 'It's not a perfect bill.'
After their 2-0 defeat against Venezuela in the South American qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup, the Bolivian national team has faced a new setback: the Venezuelan authorities have prevented their flight from leaving Maturin airport, without offering clear explanations.
The Bolivian delegation, which claims it had all the necessary documentation and permits to return to its country, was forced to return to its hotel in the middle of the night after hours of waiting without authorisation to leave Venezuela.
The technical director of the Venezuelan team, Óscar Villegas, said that the situation took them by surprise, as they had previously asked a Bolivian government minister to coordinate with the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro to facilitate their departure.
Harold Howard, in charge of security and logistics for the team, spoke of "sabotage" by the Venezuelan regime, explaining that they were informed of an alleged problem with "air traffic" as the reason for the hold-up, despite the fact that there were only two planes landing at the time.
The incident has generated outrage in the Bolivian sporting and political community, which has called on the national authorities to intervene and demand answers from the Venezuelan government.
The situation has also affected the planning of the Bolivian team, which was scheduled to leave for La Paz at around 5:00 (local time) and train that afternoon ahead of Tuesday's match with Chile in El Alto.
This episode adds to a series of obstacles and problems that, according to complaints, Maduro's regime has imposed on foreign delegations, displaying a lack of reliability and transparency in the treatment of visiting teams.
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