'No plans' for a Trump-Musk call to tamp down their feud, White House chief of staff says

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will not be calling billionaire Elon Musk on Friday after their feud exploded into public, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said.

“There are no plans for that today," Wiles told NBC News when asked about reporting by Politico that White House aides scheduled a call Friday with the billionaire Tesla CEO to try to patch things up between the two men.

Trump is "not interested" in a call, a senior White House official told NBC News.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump is focused on the "One Big Beautiful Bill," the GOP domestic policy bill that Musk trashed, which triggered their falling out. "That's the mindset he left the Oval Office in yesterday," she said.

A Trump administration official added, “There could be anything — I’d like to de-escalate a very unfortunate situation. But there are no calls on the books, at least not now.”

The White House is taking the feud seriously: White House aides scrambled into at least two closed-door meetings Thursday to strategize about whether and how to respond to Musk's social media barrage. Vice President JD Vance was with Trump when the tweets began and they spoke multiple times Thursday, according to a person familiar with the day's events. Trump encouraged Vance to be diplomatic about Musk if asked about him, the person said.

Meanwhile, Trump is considering selling or giving away the red Tesla that he purchased back in March, according to a senior White House official. The president is still weighing his options and has not made a final decision, the official added.

The spat began Thursday when Trump criticized Musk's recent attacks on the Republican policy measure over its estimated increase to the deficit, and turned into a full-scale blow-up that sent ripples through Congress and Tesla’s stock prices.

“I’m very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here, better than you people,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“I’m very disappointed in Elon," Trump said. "I’ve helped Elon a lot.”

Trump suggested that Musk, who earlier this week called the GOP bill a “disgusting abomination,” was upset that the bill cut out a tax credit implemented by the Biden administration to incentivize electric vehicle purchases.

Musk denied he was knowledgeable about the legislation.

"False, 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!" Musk wrote in a post on X.

The two men spent the rest of the day Thursday lobbing insults at each other on their own social media platforms — Musk on X and Trump on Truth Social.

Musk posted on X more than 40 times Thursday criticizing the GOP tax bill and reacting to Trump's comments.

Amid the flurry of posts and comments, Democrats are cautious about whether Musk’s opposition will ultimately help their efforts to block Trump’s tax and spending legislation.

“It will have some effect, but Republicans are much more in fear of Trump than Musk,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., though he added that Musk’s disapproval “lends credibility to their objections, particularly on the debt and deficit.”

Vance defended Trump in a post on X Thursday night, saying, "President Trump has done more than any person in my lifetime to earn the trust of the movement he leads. I’m proud to stand beside him."

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said in an interview on CNBC that he found Musk’s posts on X “surprising and disappointing.”

Johnson also pushed back on Musk’s claims that he is responsible for the Republican 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. But we all worked hard. We delivered the House majority."

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., the chair of the House's subcommittee focused on the work of the Department of Government Efficiency, said that Musk's "behavior was very unwarranted."

"Do I like the price tag of it? No. I agree with Elon," she said of the big bill the House recently passed, with Greene voting for it. "I don’t like the price tag of it, but I’m able to look at all aspects of the bill, and I don’t have to get into an argument with anybody."

Meanwhile, other Republicans are trying to avoid the clash and remain neutral.

“There’s a good verse in Proverbs: ‘Stay out of fights,’" Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told NBC. "I’m staying out of this one.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com