President Donald Trump praised wayward wingman Elon Musk on Sunday, despite the Tesla founder’s renewed criticism of the president’s “big, beautiful bill.”
Trump called Musk a “wonderful guy” in an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, though he did say Musk’s behavior after their split, which included a since-deleted tweet connecting Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, was “not appropriate.”
“Have you spoken to Elon Musk? What happened there?” Bartiromo asked.
“I think he’s a wonderful guy. I haven’t spoken to him much, but I think Elon is a wonderful guy, and I know he’s going to do well always,” Trump responded. “He’s a smart guy. And he actually went and campaigned with me and this and that. But he got a little bit upset, and that wasn’t appropriate.”
“Why did he get upset? He just wasn’t getting what he wanted?” Bartiromo pressed.
“Look, the electric vehicle mandate, the EV mandate, is a tough thing for him. I would, you know, I don’t want everybody to have to have an electric car,” Trump explained.
Musk, the former DOGE head, took to X on his 54th birthday Saturday to bash the now-passed Senate draft of Trump’s bill, which he said would “destroy millions of jobs” and raise taxes on all wind and solar projects that have not yet started construction.
“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country! Utterly insane and destructive,” Musk wrote in the post.
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The post comes after Musk had a public falling out with Trump earlier this month over the administration’s “big, beautiful” spending bill.
The billionaire criticized the first version of the bill in early June, calling it a “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill [that] is a disgusting abomination.”
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“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong,” Musk wrote in the June 3 post. “You know it.”
The new version, which Senate Republicans hope to deliver to the president by July 4, was debuted Friday night by Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
In his post about the environmental cuts, Musk said the bill would give “handouts” to industries of the past, while severely damaging industries of the future.
