Trump and Musk's Public Split: Will They Mute Their Feud as Tesla Shares Recover?
The dramatic public war of words between President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk could end as abruptly as it began, and Tesla shares were clawing back territory on Friday.
White House staffers have scheduled a phone call with Musk to try and keep the fallout from escalating, Politico reported late Thursday, as Musk hinted on social media he was ready to take time to cool the heated situation.
Politico briefly interviewed an apparently unbothered Trump to get a comment on the clash with one of, until recently, his biggest supporters. “Oh, it’s OK,” Trump was quoted as having said in that telephone call. “It’s going very well, never done better.”
However, muddying the picture further, ABC News reported Trump wasn’t quite ready to make up. The network outlet said it had asked Trump about plans for a call between him and Musk on Friday.
“You mean the man who has lost his mind?” he Trump reportedly asked ABC’s Jonathan Karl, adding that Musk wanted to chat and he wasn’t “particularly” interested.
On Thursday afternoon, the president and Musk, a major donor and close campaign and White House adviser to Trump, were locked in a bitter exchange that played out over social media beginning with Musk’s sharp criticism of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” legislation. The Tesla chief executive had blasted the bill as “massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill [that] is a disgusting abomination.”
Read: The Trump-Musk bromance is blowing up in front of our eyes. How EVs played a role.
So heated was the spat that Trump on Thursday threatened to cancel government contracts with Musk’s companies, which also include SpaceX, with Tesla shares selling off sharply.
Read: Tesla has lost nearly $200 billion in market cap since Elon Musk left ‘DOGE.’ Here’s what may be ahead for the stock.
For Musk’s part, he seemed ready to take the advice of one of his X followers late Thursday: “Cool off and take a step back for a couple of days,” advised X user Alaska, after Musk threatened to decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. “Good advice. We won’t decommission Dragon,” Musk responded.
Amid signs of a prospective Musk-Trump truce, shares of Tesla climbed more than 4% in premarket trading, after tumbling 14% on Thursday. That drop marked the biggest one-day percentage wipeout since March 10 and pushed Tesla to its lowest share price since May 7.
Read: Tesla has lost nearly $200 billion in market cap since Elon Musk left ‘DOGE.’ Here’s what may be ahead for the stock.
U.S. stock futures indicated a stronger start ahead, after the S&P 500 snapped a three-session winning streak with a 0.5% drop on Thursday. A stronger-than-forecast nonfarm-payrolls report was adding texture to the Friday backdrop.
But some say the damage may be lasting for Musk. Among them is Ross Gerber, Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management co-founder and CEO, who said the public feud was a “disaster” for the Tesla chief.
“There is clearly no control over what is happening to what is the Musk empire dismantling in real time as we’re watching it,” Gerber told Bloomberg in an interview late Thursday , adding that Musk will have to “live with” the fallout from sparring with a U.S. president for “a long time” and “it could be very detrimental to his companies.”
Gerber said he wouldn’t be surprised by “massive shareholder lawsuits against the board of directors and Tesla for the loss in value from this behavior, which is clearly detrimental to shareholders.”
“So nobody on the board is going to do anything. Nobody is going to protect Tesla shareholders, and the way you protect yourself is by selling stock. And I personally sold some stock today, and we’ve been sellers for years and continue to be sellers of Tesla,” he said.
Musk’s net worth dropped by $33.9 billion to $335 billion on Thursday, but he remains the world’s wealthiest individual, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
Read on: Options traders pile into bearish bets on Tesla at fastest pace on record as Musk-Trump feud escalates
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