Donald Trump met with billionaire Elon Musk, his once trusted adviser with whom the president had a spectacular public falling out, at a memorial event for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, raising speculation that the two could be reconciling.
Trump shook hands with and chatted to Musk, who once led the president’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which took a hatchet to the US federal workforce and agencies in the early months of Trump’s second administration.
The pair sat in the stands of a stadium in Glendale, Arizona, where tens of thousands had gathered to pay tribute to Kirk, who was shot dead on 10 September at a Utah university campus.
Video of the two was shared by the official White House account on social media platform X, which Musk owns.
Musk donated more than $270m to Trump’s presidential campaign, barnstorming key battleground states for the Republican.
After the election, he oversaw the launch of the DOGE, a controversial initiative that eliminated thousands of government jobs deemed by the agency to be part of a pattern of waste, fraud and abuse.
But Musk broke with Trump over the White House’s flagship tax and spending bill, which Musk called “utterly insane and destructive.” The extraordinary feud, which largely played out over social media, saw Musk accuse Trump of being named in the so-called “Epstein files” – documents related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In July, Trump said he would “take a look” at the idea of deporting Musk.
After the falling out, Musk went as far as to announce he was launching his own “America First” party, but little has materialised so far. Musk on his X account posted an image of him and Trump sitting together at the memorial, captioning it: “For Charlie.”
It is not known whether Sunday’s meeting was the first between the pair since their falling out.
With Agence France-Presse
