Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker in a phone interview that he has no plans to make up with Musk. Asked specifically if he thought his relationship with the mega-billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is over, Trump responded, “I would assume so, yeah.”

“I’m too busy doing other things,” Trump continued.

Trump criticised Musk in the Oval Office, and before long, he and Musk began trading bitterly personal attacks on social media, sending the White House and GOP congressional leaders scrambling to assess the fallout.

As the back-and-forth intensified, Musk suggested Trump should be impeached and claimed without evidence that the government was concealing information about the president’s association with infamous paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Musk appeared by Saturday morning to have deleted his posts about Epstein.

Vice President JD Vance in an interview tried to downplay the feud. He said Musk was making a “huge mistake” going after Trump, but called him an “emotional guy” getting frustrated.

“I hope that eventually Elon comes back into the fold. Maybe that’s not possible now because he’s gone so nuclear,” Vance said.

Vance called Musk an “incredible entrepreneur,” and said that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which sought to cut government spending and laid off or pushed out thousands of workers, was “really good.”

Vance made the comments in an interview with “manosphere” comedian Theo Von, who last month joked about snorting drugs off a mixed-race baby and the sexuality of men in the US Navy when he opened for Trump at a military base in Qatar.

The Vance interview was taped on Thursday as Musk’s posts were unfurling on X, the social media network the billionaire owns.

During the interview, Von showed the vice president Musk’s claim that Trump’s administration hasn’t released all the records related to Epstein because Trump is mentioned in them.

Vance responded to that, saying, “Absolutely not. Donald Trump didn’t do anything wrong with Jeffrey Epstein.”

“This stuff is just not helpful,” Vance said in response to another post shared by Musk calling for Trump to be impeached and replaced with Vance.

“It’s totally insane. The president is doing a good job.”

Vance also defended the bill that has drawn Musk’s ire, and said its central goal was not to cut spending but to extend the 2017 tax cuts approved in Trump’s first term.

The bill would slash spending and taxes but also leave some 10.9 million more people without health insurance and spike deficits by US$2.4 trillion ($3.7 trillion) over the decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

“It’s a good bill,” Vance said. “It’s not a perfect bill.”

The interview was taped in Nashville at a restaurant owned by musician Kid Rock, a Trump ally.