Elon Musk attended a dinner hosted by President Donald Trump in honor of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) at the White House on Tuesday. And it looks like we can say it officially. The public dispute between Musk and Trump is over. For now.
How can one be sure that the dispute between the two men is over? When President Trump entered the room with MBS, he patted Musk on the stomach.
Trump gave a speech at the dinner livestreamed by major media outlets, praising Saudi Arabia’s pledge to invest $1 trillion in the US. The President also announced that he was making the country a “major non-NATO ally”, meaning the two countries would work more closely on economic and military issues.
Trump shouted from the stage to Nvidia and Apple CEO Tim Cook for “all the money you’re investing in the United States.” The President didn’t mention Musk in his speech, but who needs to yell when you’ve patted your belly.
The White House dinner came on a particularly strange day, as the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to release Justice Department files on late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The House voted 427–1 in favor of releasing the files, with Republican Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana casting the lone vote against it. Shortly thereafter, the Senate agreed to consider the legislation passed even without a vote, and it is now headed to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.
It’s unclear when Trump might sign the Epstein Files Transparency Act as he’s a little busy tonight. But Musk’s presence at the East Room event is amusing, given how the billionaire oligarch gave up his formal role in the government on May 30. Musk was head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) before his departure in a bizarre spectacle witnessed by reporters in the Oval Office of the White House.
Musk’s alleged “exit” from the government was more about personal relationships than professional ones. For example, SpaceX didn’t lose any contracts, but it did briefly lose the respect of the man it helped found at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It started when Musk arrived at the White House on May 30 with a black eye and strange behavior (Musk once looked at the ceiling), although both men tried to make it seem as if they were parting amicably.
Musk spent the next few days tweeting criticism of the Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill”, arguing that it did not do enough to limit spending. And Trump eventually began to hit back at Musk, explaining by June 5 that he must be having “Trump derangement syndrome”, and ridiculing his black eye.
Later that day, Musk lashed out at Trump, accusing him of being in on the Epstein files. You don’t have to take Musk’s word for it, given the fact that the Wall Street Journal report indicates that Pam Bondi told Trump he was in the files. The question is what being in the files actually means for Trump. The president was named in several emails recently released by the House subcommittee investigating Epstein.
After Musk’s public clash with Trump (he ultimately deleted tweets about Epstein), the billionaire pledged to start his own political party. Musk positioned his new party, called the America Party, as a party that would be more fair than the current Democratic and Republican parties. Musk, despite being a far-right kook, often brands himself as a centrist in a world that has become too “woke”, with the suggestion that the Overton Window has only shifted to show that he is an extremist.
Shortly after the rift with Trump, Musk was asked on Twitter where he would use his new political party to release the Epstein files, and he responded with an emoji reading “100.” However, Musk has completely scrapped the idea for his party. Perhaps Musk realized that third parties rarely make a dent in the American system, which is built to favor the two major parties. The best demonstration of this bias is the fact that Ross Perot won 19% of the popular vote in the 1992 presidential election and did not receive a single Electoral College vote. The system is simply rigged against third parties.
Musk’s expected arrival at the White House on Tuesday will not be his first physical meeting with Trump since their nasty break-up in June. The two men were seen speaking at a memorial service for MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk in September. According to the New York Times, DOGE members are reportedly planning a party in Austin, Texas this weekend to celebrate Musk and Trump’s thaw in relations. However, it seems unclear whether Musk himself will be present for that or not.
According to the New York Times, other notable people present at the White House dinner on Tuesday: Paramount CEO David Ellison, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman and General Motors CEO Mary Barra. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. is also scheduled to attend.
Musk is firmly back on the Trump train, no matter what he said in their months apart. According to the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire told associates in August that he was concerned a political party would siphon off Republican voters and hurt Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections. It might seem strange for Musk to be cozying up to Trump again after what happened with the Epstein files, but as Gizmodo has often argued, these guys need each other. They clearly dislike each other personally, but oligarchs make strange bedfellows.
Trump has built a powerful political machine and holds the keys to federal contracts in the world’s richest country. Musk is the richest man in the world and he needs those federal contracts to keep his empire afloat. They don’t like hanging out together, but they have to work together if they want to build the world they both want to see. It is a world where they are at the top of business and government. And it’s a world where masked men round up thousands of immigrants (and sometimes Native Americans) in a quest to make America whiter.