“I regret some of my posts about President Donald Trump last week. They went too far,” he wrote on X, the social media network he owns.

He then took centre stage in the White House in the early months of the administration, leading controversial budget-cutting efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which ripped billions of dollars out of government programs.

The public partnership ended amicably late last month with a mutually praiseworthy Oval Office press conference but the fragile peace quickly deteriorated as Musk took aim at Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill”.

Musk lambasted Trump’s centrepiece tax cuts and spending bill, suggested Trump should be impeached and claimed without evidence that the government was concealing information about the president’s association with infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump at the weekend said he had no desire to repair their relationship and there would be “serious consequences” if Musk used his billions to back Democrat rivals.

“I’m too busy doing other things,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker in a phone interview.

“You know, I won an election in a landslide. I gave him a lot of breaks, long before this happened, I gave him breaks in my first administration, and saved his life in my first administration, I have no intention of speaking to him.”