President Trump said Thursday that he was “very disappointed” in his former DOGE chief Elon Musk, who has become an extremely vocal critic of his signature “Big Beautiful Bill” in recent days.

When asked to comment on Musk’s criticism, Trump appeared wistful and a little bit sad as he told reporters he “always liked Elon” and was “very surprised.”

“I’d rather he criticize me than the bill because the bill is incredible,” Trump said during a meeting with Germany’s new Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office.  “It’s the biggest tax cut in history.”

Trump said the reason Musk was upset is because the budget eliminates an electric vehicle tax credit that benefited companies like Tesla.

“I’m very disappointed, because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here better than you people,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “He knew everything about it. He had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate, because that’s billions and billions of dollars.”

Trump said another possible reason for the falling out is that he had recently nixed a person Musk had recommended to lead NASA because he was “totally a Democrat.”

Last week, the president withdrew his support for billionaire Jared Isaacman’s nomination.

“I said, ‘look, we won. We get certain privileges and one of the privileges is we don’t have to appoint a Democrat,'” Trump said. “NASA’s very important.”

Isaacman, a private spaceflight investor, said in an interview Thursday that he thought the move might have been a shot across the bow at his friend Musk.

Musk meanwhile, shared on X Trump’s December 2024 announcement that he was nominating Isaacman, “an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).”

The president told reporters that he could understand why Musk was upset, although he seemed very happy during the time he worked in the White House.

“Elon and I had a great relationship,” Trump said wistfully. “I don’t know if we will anymore.”

Trump reminded the reporters in the room that on Musk’s last day as his DOGE czar just six days ago, “he said wonderful things about me.” The president also noted that Musk had even worn a hat that said “Trump was right about everything.”

“And I am right about the Big Beautiful Bill,” the president said, adding that according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which he said is run by Democrats, if you add tariff revenues to the bill “you get a tremendous surplus.”

Trump said the EV subsidies were “really unfair” because the United States should have all sorts of cars.

“We want to have cars of all types —electric, gasoline combustion, we want to have hybrids,” the president said. “We want to be able to sell everything.”

Musk in recent days has scathingly rebuked the House-passed “one big, beautiful bill” and has even urged conservatives to vote the Republican lawmakers who voted for it out of office.

Earlier this week, he posted on X that the bill was “outrageous,” “pork-filled” and “a disgusting abomination.”

“I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot,” Trump told reporters, adding that Musk “worked hard” and did a “good job.”

“And I’ll be honest, I think he misses the place,” the president continued. “He’s not the first. People leave my administration and they love us. And then, at some point, they miss it so badly. And some of them embrace it and some of them actually become hostile. I don’t know what it is. It’s sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it.”

Responding to Trump’s comments, Musk immediately wrote on X: “Whatever. Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill.”

In a subsequent post, he denied that he was ever shown the details in the measure when it was being crafted, writing that “this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!”

The Tesla CEO added: “In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this! Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill. Slim and beautiful is the way.”

Musk also shared a video of himself saying in 2021 that he was against an EV tax credit and Congress should get rid of all subsidies. The billionaire also shared a 2023 post from Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in which he declared that the then-federal debt of $31.4 trillion was “not sustainable.”

“Where is the Mike Johnson of 2023?” he wrote.

Musk went on to share a 2018 tweet from Johnson that said, “at some point, Congress has to stop this endless cycle of out-of-control deficit spending.”

“I super agree with this guy ” Musk wrote.

Musk and Johnson were expected to speak later Thursday about BBB’s path going forward. It wasn’t clear whether Musk’s X posts came before or after the phone call.

The Tesla CEO also posted a poll asking “who’s right?” about the Big Beautiful Bill, which showed 76.4 percent of X users agreed with him and only 23.6 percent agreed with more than 230,000 votes.

A separate poll, which he pinned to his timeline, asks if it’s “time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?” Nearly 90 percent of respondents said yes, while 17 percent said no.

Trump finally responded to Musk’s fusillade on Truth Social, saying: “Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!”

Musk fired back on X, saying: “Such an obvious lie. So sad.”

Trump’s suggestion that the Tesla CEO was upset because of the end of EV tax credits was fact-checked on X’s Community Notes, which provided multiple links showing that Musk was always in favor of ending the subsidies.

Musk then dropped “the really big bomb” that is sure to burn bridges toward any reconciliation with his former boss.

“@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,” the billionaire posted. “Have a nice day, DJT!”

In an ominous follow-up, Musk urged X users to “mark this post for the future. The truth is coming out.”