United States President Donald Trump has warned billionaire former ally Elon Musk against funding Democratic candidates in the country’s 2026 midterm elections as the pair’s volcanic break-up continued to play out on the world stage.
“He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,” Trump told US network NBC News in an interview published Saturday, without spelling out what the repercussions might be for the tech mogul, whose businesses benefit from lucrative US federal contracts.
Trump aides, various Republicans, and key wealthy donors to the GOP have urged the two to temper the bitter feud and make peace, fearing irreparable political and economic fallout.
But, asked whether he thought his relationship with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO was over, Trump said, “I would assume so, yeah”.
The interview featured Trump’s most extensive comments yet on the spectacular bust-up that saw Musk criticising his signature tax and spending bill as an “abomination”, tensions escalating after he went on to highlight one-time links between the president and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
By Saturday morning, Musk had deleted his “big bomb” allegation that Trump featured in unreleased government files on former associates of Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges.
“That is the real reason they have not been made public,” he said in Thursday’s post on X.
The Trump administration has acknowledged it is reviewing tens of thousands of documents, videos, and investigative material that his “MAGA” movement says will unmask public figures complicit in Epstein’s crimes.
Trump was named in a trove of deposition and statements linked to Epstein that were unsealed by a New York judge in early 2024. The president has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but he had a long and well-publicised friendship with Epstein.
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