Days after the very public breakup of President Trump and his former adviser Elon Musk, the latter appears to be doing damage control.
“I regret some of my posts about President [Trump] last week,” Musk posted on X, his social media platform, just after 3 a.m. ET on Wednesday. “They went too far.”
Trump has been active on social media early Wednesday, but has not responded publicly to Musk’s apology.
However, in a previously recorded podcast interview with the New York Post that aired on Wednesday morning, Trump said he had “no hard feelings” towards Musk.
“I don’t blame him for anything but I was a little disappointed,” Trump said, adding that he had not “thought too much about him in the last little while.”
When asked if he could forgive Musk, Trump said “I guess I could,” but that “my sole function now is getting this country back to a level higher than it’s ever been.”
The president told NBC News on Saturday that he has no desire to repair his relationship with Musk, saying he assumed it was over.
“I’m too busy doing other things,” Trump said, adding, “I have no intention of speaking to him.”
Trump was critical of Musk in that interview, saying the tech billionaire had been “disrespectful to the office of the president.”
But Trump also appeared to soften some of his stances. He said he hadn’t given any more thought to his earlier threat of canceling Musk’s companies’ federal contracts or investigating Musk’s immigration status, as Trump ally Steve Bannon had publicly suggested.
Meanwhile, Musk quietly deleted some of his more inflammatory tweets from the previous week, including posts endorsing a call for Trump’s impeachment, linking Trump to the files of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and saying Trump’s tariffs would cause a recession this year.
Trump said on Monday that he had no plans to discontinue Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system that was installed at the White House despite security concerns — though may move his Tesla, which he bought in March, off-site. And he told reporters he would not have a problem if Musk called.
“We had a good relationship, and I just wish him well — very well, actually,” Trump said. A clip of the exchange was posted to X, where Musk responded with a heart emoji.
Source: www.npr.org