Trump started it, Elon Musk says – The Times
A Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador has been brought back to the US to face criminal human-trafficking charges, Pam Bondi, the attorney-general, announced.
Kilmar Abrego García was an alleged member of the notorious MS-13 gang, a “smuggler of children and women” and trafficked narcotics and guns, Bondi said at a press conference.
His deportation in March became a flashpoint in Trump’s immigration crackdown after the administration conceded he had been mistakenly sent to a maximum security prison in his native El Salvador.
He has been indicted on two federal criminal charges in the middle district of Tennessee: conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain.
“This is what American justice looks like,” Bondi said.
The president has signed an executive order aimed at safeguarding areas of national security from the threat posed by drones.
Trump has ordered a task force to crack down on unlawful uses like spying and drug smuggling before the Fifa World Cup in 2026 and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
“With large-scale public events such as the Olympics and the World Cup on the horizon, taking action on airspace security has never been timelier,” Michael Kratsios, the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told reporters on Friday.
The order comes days after a Ukrainian drone attack on Russian bombers raised questions about whether the US has itself taken adequate precautionary steps to guard against possible drone attacks in the future.
Sebastian Gorka, senior director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, said increased enforcement of current drone laws would deter “evildoers and idiots”.
Trump said that he had inspected the site of a new White House ballroom that he planned to pay for himself.
The president has long complained about the state of the East Room, which is used for state banquets and formal events.
In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed that presidents had wanted to build a new White House ballroom for 150 years, but that it was never completed because they lacked experience in construction.
“But I do, like maybe nobody else, and it will go up quickly, and be a wonderful addition, very much in keeping with the magnificent White House itself,” Trump wrote.
Trump has announced that his administration will hold trade talks with China in London on Monday.
The meeting comes after Trump held a 90-minute phone call with President Xi earlier this week to discuss a deal over a tariff impasse that has roiled global markets.
The US delegation will be led by Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary and Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative.
“The meeting should go very well,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
Former employees at the US Agency for International Development (USAid) have trolled Musk over his public falling-out with Trump.
Musk shuttered the 64-year-old aid agency in February, firing thousands of staff, cancelling contracts and merging its operations with the US State Department.
“Spent the weekend feeding USAid into a wood chipper,” Musk wrote on X on February 3.
After Musk’s clash with Trump on Thursday, an Instagram account called Friends of USAid wrote a lengthy message sarcastically sympathising with him. “Hey buddy, we know you’re feeling really angry and betrayed right now by your friends in politics. Boy, do we get it,” the message read.
“Trump was supposed to be your wingman, bro. He should have been the grown-up in the room to say ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, sleep it off before you rip away anti-retrovirals from orphans in Africa’.
“We’ll see you in the woodchipper, sincerely, one of the 50,000 people you laid off by email.”
Musk “crossed the Rubicon” when he called for the president to be impeached, according to Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser.
The Tesla chief executive spent days bashing the administration’s tax and spending bill. On Thursday, he escalated the attacks on social media and claimed that Trump should be replaced by JD Vance, the vice-president.
Bannon, an early supporter of Trump’s, told NPR that there was “no going back” for Musk. “It’s one thing to make comments about spending on the bill. There’s another thing about what he did,” Bannon said.
“This is so outrageous. It has crossed the line.”
The White House has said the Department of Government Efficiency’s work to slash wasteful government spending will continue, after Musk was ousted.
“The Trump administration will continue the mission of cutting waste, fraud and abuse across all agencies to ensure the federal government is effectively using taxpayer dollars,” said Taylor Rogers, White House assistant press secretary.
“In fact, the passage of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill and the Rescissions package is essential to further codifying the Doge cuts.”
Musk originally pledged to cut $2 trillion in federal government spending. When he left the administration on May 30, Doge’s online “wall of receipts” claimed to have cut $180 billion.
An analysis from the American Enterprise Institute disputed that figure and said that overall spending had increased in Trump’s second term.
Musk has addressed his dispute with Trump for the first time today, in which he claimed that the real target of his anger was Congress. The tech billionaire responded to another user on his social media platform X, who wrote: “Elon criticised Congress, not Trump. Trump then attacked Elon personally.”
“Exactly,” Musk replied.
Over on Truth Social, Trump has stayed out of the spat. He has spent much of the day posting about interest rates and most recently his account posted a picture commemorating the 81st anniversary of D-Day.
Trump “was pissed” as Musk unleashed a torrent of social media attacks on Thursday, according to the Republican senator Ted Cruz, who was with Trump in the Oval Office as the war of words was waged.
Cruz said he was hopeful the warring billionaires could reconcile. “I think a lot of conservatives are feeling, like, this is not good, let’s hug and make up,” Cruz said. He offered a potential middle ground, saying that both Trump and Musk were right about the One Big Beautiful Bill — that the US needs it to pass, but it could still be improved.
The Trump-Musk blow-up has created an opportunity for Democrats to defeat the Republican Party’s signature tax and spending bill, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House said.
Musk criticised the One Big Beautiful Bill, saying it would add trillions of dollars to the national debt and undermine the work of his Department of Government Efficiency.
“To the extent that Musk has declared the bill a ‘disgusting abomination,’ we agree,” Jeffries said. “The opportunity that exists right now is to kill the tax scam. We have to keep the pressure on House Republicans and Senate Republicans to do the right thing.”
The bill would cut taxes and reduce spending on Medicaid and food benefits to low-income families and add $2.4 trillion to the US deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office. After narrowly passing the House, the bill has stalled in the Senate.
Trump has urged the US Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by a full point.
“‘Too late’ at the Fed is a disaster! Europe has had ten rate cuts, we have had none,” Trump posted to Truth Social on Friday in his latest attempt to exert pressure on its chairman, Jerome Powell. “Despite him, our country is doing great. Go for a full point, rocket fuel!”
Trump followed up with a second post, writing: “If ‘too late’ at the Fed would CUT, we would greatly reduce interest rates, long and short, on debt that is coming due,” he wrote. “Borrowing costs should be MUCH LOWER!!!”
The European Central Bank cut interest rates by 25 basis points on Thursday, taking its main rate to 2 per cent. The US Federal Reserve has maintained its benchmark interest rate in the range of 4.25 per cent to 4.50 per cent since December.
The net worth of Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive, fell by nearly $34 billion on Thursday as the feud with President Trump led to the electric carmaker’s shares experiencing their biggest drop in four years.
The fortune of the world’s richest man fell to $335 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Since the start of the year, Musk’s net worth has declined by $97.9 billion.
He was the biggest daily loser on Bloomberg’s list of the world’s 500 richest people. However, his net worth remains comfortably ahead of the second-richest, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta Platforms, who is worth $241 billion.
A lawyer for Jeffrey Epstein has dismissed Elon Musk’s claims that the late paedophile had damaging information about President Trump.
David Schoen, a New York-based criminal defence lawyer, responded after Musk suggested on Thursday that the president was withholding the release of justice department files related to Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring.
“I was hired to lead Jeffrey Epstein’s defence as his criminal lawyer nine days before he died,” Schoen wrote in a post on X. “He sought my advice for months before that. I can say authoritatively, unequivocally, and definitively that he had no information to hurt President Trump. I specifically asked him!”
Pam Bondi, the attorney-general, released more than 100 pages of documents related to the Epstein case in February, but they shed little new information.
Democrats have written to Bondi and Kash Patel, the FBI director, to confirm whether the president appeared in the files.
Democrats in the House of Representatives were making bets on how long it would take for the Trump-Musk relationship to implode, according to one congressman.
“We had wagers going on the floor: is this relationship going to last three months? Is it going to last six months?” Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat from Texas, told CNN in an interview. “I don’t think you needed to be a genius, though, to foresee that this eruptive and public display of divorce was going to happen at some point.”
Starbase, a newly incorporated city that is home to Musk’s SpaceX’s headquarters, is in Gonzalez’s district. Trump has threatened to revoke the aerospace company’s government contracts. Musk responded by saying he could decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft used to transport cargo and crew to and from the International Space Station.
“That would be devastating for SpaceX, and obviously many other programmes that Musk is running,” Gonzalez said.
Trump said he was unsurprised by the personal attacks levelled at him by his former close adviser on Thursday. “Nothing catches me by surprise. Nothing,” the president told the New York Post.
He instead touted his polling numbers and a strong jobs report released on Friday that showed the US economy gained 139,000 jobs in May. “The numbers are through the roof, the stock market is up, billions are pouring in from tariffs and my poll numbers are the highest they’ve ever been. Other than that, what can I tell you, right?” Trump said.
After posting rapid-fire responses to Trump’s criticisms on Thursday, Musk’s social media account on X has remained uncharacteristically quiet on Friday morning.
Musk’s attempts to broker a phone call between the two men have been rebuffed by the president, who told one news outlet that the Tesla billionaire had “lost his mind”.
A poll asking whether it was time to create a new political party in America remained pinned to the top of Musk’s account on Friday morning.
Musk’s posts on X attacking Trump were “surprising and disappointing”, Mike Johnson, the House speaker, said. Johnson told CNBC in an interview on Friday that he was with the president as the fight was unfolding on social media, and that the president was “disappointed”.
Referring to Musk’s criticism of the One Big Beautiful Bill, Johnson said: “I don’t argue with him about how to build rockets, and I wish he wouldn’t argue with me about how to craft legislation and pass it.”
The speaker also played down Musk’s claims that he had been responsible for the Republican Party’s election victories in November. “Elon was a big contributor in the last election, but this was a whole team effort,” Johnson said. “I mean, President Trump is the most consequential political figure of his generation, of modern American history. He is the one responsible for that.”
Trump is expected to attend an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event in Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday night, according to a report.
The president is a longtime fan of mixed martial arts and a close friend of Dana White, the UFC chief executive. In November, Trump sat ringside at a UFC event at Madison Square Garden in New York with Elon Musk and Kid Rock, the singer and Trump ally.
Saturday’s UFC 316 will feature a five-fight main card headlined by a title rematch between current bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili, of Georgia, and the American former champion Sean O’Malley.
Attention is turning to how Trump could retaliate against Musk. He said yesterday that “the easiest way to save money in our budget” would be to cut all federal contracts with Musk’s companies, which were promised about $3 billion in government contracts last year.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, said on his War Room podcast that Trump should take control of SpaceX through legislation from the Korean war that allows the president emergency authority to seize control of domestic industries.
Bannon also urged the president to investigate Musk’s drug use and his efforts to be briefed on classified military plans involving China. He further called on Trump to revoke Musk’s security clearance and begin deportation proceedings against the South African-born Tesla chief executive, who has been a naturalised US citizen for more than two decades.
Tesla shares rose by more than 6 per cent at the opening bell today, after the electric vehicle company shed more than 14 per cent on Thursday, losing more than $150 billion in market value.
Trump threatened to slash all government contracts held by Musk as they exchanged insults yesterday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Index, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq all rose by just under 1 per cent after the US added 139,000 jobs in May.
Errol Musk, the father of Elon, has described the feud between his son and Donald Trump as “over the top”, likening it to a clash between “gorillas” fighting for dominance.
Musk, 79, advised his “alpha” son, 53, to accept that the president was the more dominant of the two and would “win this round”.
“In any successful group of animals, whether gorillas, elephants or human beings, the dominant males will always fight for dominance,” Musk said, predicting that an eruption of bitter exchanges between two of the world’s most powerful men “would now fizzle out”.
Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, has weighed in on the Trump-Musk row with an apparent joke.
“We are ready to facilitate the conclusion of a peace deal between D [Donald] and E [Elon] for a reasonable fee and to accept Starlink shares as payment,” Medvedev said, referring to Musk’s satellite company. “Don’t fight, guys!”
Musk insinuated yesterday that Trump was withholding files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring because they implicated the president.
How did Trump and Epstein really know each other?
JD Vance, the vice-president, has pushed back on claims that Trump’s feud with Musk was rash or ill-planned.
“There are many lies the corporate media tells about President Trump. One of the most glaring is that he’s impulsive or short-tempered,” Vance wrote on X. “Anyone who has seen him operate under pressure knows that’s ridiculous. It’s (maybe) the single biggest disconnect between fake media perception and reality.”
Late on Thursday night, Vance voiced his support for the president in his battle with Musk, saying he was “proud to stand beside him”.
Trump is planning to sell off or give away the red Tesla Model S that he bought from Elon Musk after he showcased five of his vehicles at the White House in March, according to Fox News. Trump said he paid by cheque for the car, which has been visible in the car park at the White House complex and was used by various members of his staff.
“The one I like is that one and I want the same colour,” he said, pointing at the model during an event on March 11 that drew alarm at a sitting president using the trappings of office to promote a private company. The Model S is listed on the Tesla website for $73,490, or $88,490 for the all-wheel-drive Model S Plaid.
Trump has torn down every opponent who has stood in the way of his political ambitions. In Musk, he may have met his match.
The formidable powers that these two American titans can bring to bear in a full-throated feud suggest that a truce is the most sensible outcome. But sense was in short supply during a pyrotechnic clash of planetary-sized egos this week that may have ramifications far beyond terrestrial confines and reach into both men’s ambitions to conquer space.
Trump will not be speaking to Musk for a while, CNN reported after speaking to the president, dampening speculation of a potential peace-making call today.
“I am not even thinking about Elon. He’s got a problem,” Trump told the broadcaster in a phone call, it reported. But he “wishes Elon well”, CNN reported.
President Trump has shown little interest in responding to Elon Musk’s overtures to reach a truce. The two men torched their previously close relationship in a few short hours on Thursday in an escalating war of words conducted on their social media networks Truth Social and X.
Musk is said to have sought a phone call with Trump to try to smooth over their differences. However, Trump told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl that he was “not particularly interested” in speaking to Musk and that the South African-born billionaire was “a man who lost his mind”.
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