Elon Musk has said that he regrets some of the posts he made last week about Donald Trump in a humiliating climbdown from his online feud with the president. 

‘I regret some of my posts about President Donald Trump last week. They went too far,’ Musk wrote in a message on his social media platform X on Wednesday. He did not say which specific posts he was talking about. Tesla shares in Frankfurt were up 2.44% after Musk’s post.

Trump and Musk exchanged insults last week after the former DOGE boss described the president’s sweeping tax and spending bill as a ‘disgusting abomination.’ A full spat exploded in public as Trump said his relationship with Musk was over, threatening to take away government funding from Musk’s SpaceX company.

But Musk doubled down, escalating with a now-deleted post that claimed the president appears in documents related to the late sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump rejected the allegations and told ABC News that Musk had ‘lost his mind’, making clear he has no immediate plans to reconcile. Musk has also since deleted a post signaling support for impeaching the president.

Sources close to Musk had said his anger has started to subside, and that they believe he may want to repair his relationship with Trump. The abrupt volte-face comes after Trump threatened ‘serious consequences’ for Musk if he sought to punish Republicans voting in favour of the controversial spending bill. Some lawmakers who were against the bill had called on Musk to fund primary challenges against Republicans who voted for the legislation.

Musk bankrolled a large part of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Trump named Musk to head an effort to downsize the federal workforce and slash spending. ‘He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,’ Trump, who also branded Musk ‘disrespectful,’ told NBC News on Saturday, without specifying what those consequences would be.

There were reports that said Trump planned to sell off the Tesla he purchased earlier this year. ‘I haven’t heard that, I mean, I may move the Tesla around a little bit,’ Trump told reporters Monday. Musk’s father said on Monday that the spat was triggered by months of intense stress on both sides, and that it needed to stop. Asked whether he thought his son had made a mistake by engaging in a public clash with the president, Errol Musk said people were sometimes unable to think as clearly as they should ‘in the heat of the moment.’

‘They’ve had five months of intense stress,’ Musk told Reuters at a conference in Moscow organised by conservative Russian tycoons. ‘With all the opposition cleared and two people left in the arena, all they have ever done is get rid of everything and now they are trying to get rid of each other – well that has to stop.’ Asked how it would end, he said: ‘Oh, it will end on a good note – very soon.’ Musk’s father told reporters he was standing by his son. ‘Elon is sticking to his principles but you cannot always stick to your principles in the real world,’ Musk’s father said. ‘Sometimes you have to give and take.’

Trump has, in recent days, held back on criticising Musk and publicly wished him the best. On Monday, the president was asked about a New York Times report that said while campaigning for Trump, Musk had been doing so much ketamine it was affecting his bladder, while also taking Ecstasy and psychadelic mushrooms. Trump said: ‘I really don’t know, I don’t think so, I hope not.’ He then added, ‘I wish him well … I just wish him well, very well, actually.’ He also said he’d keep Musk’s Starlink system in place.

Trump also said he never saw Musk get physical with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, which had also been alleged. ‘No I didn’t,’ the president answered. ‘They did have an argument, but I didn’t see a lot of physicality there,’ Trump said. Musk had roundly denied the allegations of drug use. A recent poll by More in Common found both Musk and Trump remain deeply unpopular with the British public, with Musk having a net rating of minus 50 and Trump minus 54.