It remains to be seen whether the relationship between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump will be mended.
(LifeSiteNews) -- Tech mogul Elon Musk said Wednesday that he regrets “some” of his attacks on President Donald Trump stemming from disagreements with his so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” though the two men remain far from reconciliation.
Passed last month by the U.S. House of Representatives and now before the Senate for consideration, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBB) aims to enact large portions of Trump’s legislative agenda through the budget reconciliation process, which requires only a simple majority vote in the Senate rather than the typical 60-vote threshold for standalone legislation.
It extends the 2017 Trump tax cuts, institutes various other tax changes proposed by Trump on the campaign trail, and includes several other conservative priorities, including funding for border security efforts, defunding Planned Parenthood, eliminating many “green” energy subsidies, and more.
However, it faces conservative opposition over estimates that it will add a minimum of $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade; last week, the bill’s failure to include or be prefaced by codifying the spending cuts of the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project led to a dramatic falling out between Trump and former DOGE head Musk.
Musk lobbed numerous posts against Trump last week, primarily focused on the fiscal impact of the BBB, the most eyebrow-raising of which was that “@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,” followed by “Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.” Trump shot back that Musk had “lost his mind” and suggested he was really upset by the prospect of losing electric vehicle subsidies, although Musk was on the record opposing those subsidies.
The Trump Justice Department’s failure so far to release significant new information about dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has been a source of consternation, renewing speculation that such records might implicate Trump himself. The president was one of Epstein’s many high-profile associates, having flown on Epstein’s private jet, but no evidence linking Trump to Epstein’s crimes has ever emerged, and in fact Trump eventually banned him from his Mar-a-Lago club for assaulting an underage girl.
“I was hired to lead Jeffrey Epstein’s defense as his criminal lawyer 9 days before he died. He sought my advice for months before that. I can say authoritatively, unequivocally, and definitively that he had no information to hurt President Trump,” attorney David Schoen said after Musk’s post.
Musk deleted the charge, and on Wednesday posted, “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.”
While the walk-back has been overwhelmingly interpreted as referring to the Epstein claim, Musk did not elaborate, or did he indicate whether he intends to continue lobbying against the BBB or follow through on his threat to help oust members of Congress who help it pass. He has not discussed the issue in any of his other Wednesday posts as of publication time. The New York Times reported that Musk called Trump on Monday night to speak privately before the retraction.
For his part, Trump told New York Post columnist Miranda Devine he has “no hard feelings” with Musk and “could” eventually mend their relationship, “but we have to straighten out the country.” After Musk’s retraction, Trump said, “I thought it was very nice that he did that.”
The administration and its defenders promise that separate legislation to codify DOGE cuts is still coming, starting with a $9.4 billion rescission package that primarily cuts from foreign aid and public broadcasting.
“While $9.4 billion may be small in the context of $7 trillion of annual spending, this practice can help build muscle memory and encourage policymakers to tackle the larger spending programs in the future,” the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says. “However, we’d be remiss to not point out that this package comes in the context of potential enactment of a reconciliation bill adding $3 trillion to the debt over the next decade – the equivalent of more than 300 times the amount of these rescissions.”
On June 9, House conservatives circulated a memo urging the Senate to make further changes to the BBB before passing it, including deeper spending cuts, closing loopholes in the abortion and green defunding, and eliminating language that would prohibit states and localities from regulating artificial intelligence for 10 years.
