Musk spoke to Trump privately before posting message of ‘regret’

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump received a phone call from Mr Elon Musk late on the night of June 9, outreach that led to a public expression of regret by the billionaire early on June 11 for the attacks he had lodged against the President in their extraordinary public showdown last week, according to three people briefed on the conversation.

The call came after the tech entrepreneur spoke privately on June 6 with Vice-President J.D. Vance and the White House chief of staff Susie Wiles about a path to a truce.

Ms Wiles told associates she had come to like working with Mr Musk and was one of his regular points of contact.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussions.

Those conversations paved the way for the strikingly chastened tone Mr Musk struck in a post on the social site X early Wednesday, in which he wrote: “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.”

Representatives of Mr Trump and Mr Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr Musk had spent several days signalling that he wanted to make up with the President after the two men engaged in a sharp series of personal attacks on June 5 that played out from the Oval Office and on social media.

What began as criticism by the tech billionaire of Mr Trump’s signature domestic Bill devolved into an exchange of insults that mounted throughout the day, as the President claimed he had not needed Mr Musk’s help to get elected and Mr Musk tried to link Mr Trump to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The night after Mr Musk spoke with Ms Wiles and Mr Vance, he deleted his social media posts suggesting that the Trump administration was withholding the release of government files about Epstein because they implicated the President.

It remains to be seen how Mr Trump will handle the attempted rapprochement and whether the relationship can be restored. NYTIMES