I picked a bad time to be in the air most of the day because it was a wild one in politics. As RedState reported, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk came to rhetorical blows over the "Big, Beautiful Bill," with an online back-and-forth lasting for hours, spanning multiple posts and jabs.
At one point, Musk bumped several old posts of Trump calling for spending cuts, with the president responding by claiming that the United States could save money by canceling Musk's government contracts. But while I could spend time chronicling every post, I'd rather post some of the memes, because that was the one good thing that came out of the blow-up.
So, where do things go from here? If you had asked me that earlier in the evening, I wouldn't have thought this was fixable, but apparently peace could be on the horizon. According to Politico, White House aides have already set up a phone call between the two men, set to take place on Friday.
Signs of a truce are emerging in the increasingly bitter clash between two of the world’s most powerful men.
President Donald Trump projected an air of nonchalance in an interview Thursday with POLITICO during a day of sparring over social media with Elon Musk.
Separately, White House aides, after working to persuade the president to temper his public criticism of Musk to avoid escalation, scheduled a call Friday with the billionaire CEO of Tesla to broker a peace.
“Oh it’s okay,” Trump told POLITICO in a brief telephone call when asked about the very public breakup with his onetime megabacker. “It’s going very well, never done better.” Trump went on to tout his favorability ratings saying, “The numbers are through the roof, the highest polls I’ve ever had and I have to go.”
Letting bygones be bygones would certainly be the preferable outcome here for Republicans. Musk has been a powerful ally, having spent nearly $100 million in the 2024 election, with perhaps his greatest contribution being the purchase of Twitter. As most reading this will be aware of, the site has been recentered as a free speech platform and has been a boon for proliferating conservative messaging.
With that said, Musk is not president, and perhaps a good night's sleep will remind him of that. That's not to say he can't disagree with Trump. That kind of honesty is often a good thing, but the way this all played out in public didn't help anyone. It did have Democrats practically giddy, though. We'll see if everyone can hug it out on Friday.