Vance, Wiles led effort to repair Musk-Trump relationship
Elon Musk told President Donald Trump during a long flight on Air Force One in May, as the two headed toward Beijing, that he intended to spend at least $100 million on a Republican voter-turnout operation for November’s midterm elections, The Wall Street Journal reported. Representatives for Musk did not respond to a Journal request for comment.
The commitment capped a nearly yearlong effort to repair a relationship that had fallen apart publicly in June 2025. At the apex of the feud, Musk, posting to his 240 million followers on X, told readers it was “time to drop the really big bomb” and said Trump was named in the Jeffrey Epstein investigative files. He added, in a separate post: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election. Such ingratitude.” He had spent nearly $300 million to help re-elect Trump in 2024.
Trump, posting on Truth Social, threatened to cancel Musk’s government contracts and accused him of opposing a signature tax-and-spending bill because it eliminated incentives for electric vehicles. Musk called the package a “disgusting abomination” and warned it would drive the country into more debt. Publicly, the White House played down Musk’s attacks on the president as an “unfortunate episode,” but behind the scenes, senior administration officials were working to repair the relationship.
The day after the rupture, Vance and Wiles separately reached out to Musk in an attempt to lower the temperature, according to people familiar with the matter. Early the following week, Musk placed a call to Trump, and the two had a productive conversation, the people said; Musk followed with a post expressing regret for some of his earlier comments. In September, however, Trump told a senior White House official that he was not yet ready to bring Musk back into his inner circle.
Three threads helped carry the relationship the rest of the way back. The first was the work of intermediaries before and after Kirk’s killing in September 2025. Kirk had been communicating with Musk as the feud spilled into public view, people close to him said; Trump-allied technology adviser David Sacks suggested to Wiles that she try to get the two men together. After the shooting, both attended a memorial at an Arizona football stadium, where Musk walked over to Trump’s box and briefly spoke with the president. Trump patted Musk on the elbow as the entrepreneur left, and, on the flight home, Trump asked staff what they thought about the exchange. That night, Musk posted a photo of the encounter and wrote, “For Charlie.”
The second was personnel. Musk had clashed repeatedly with Trump’s longtime aide Sergio Gor; during an early meeting in Trump’s second term, Trump, frustrated that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative was not moving fast enough, berated Gor at Musk’s prompting, according to a person familiar with the matter. In August 2025, Trump tapped Gor as U.S. ambassador to India. That November, Trump reversed an earlier June ouster and reappointed Musk ally Jared Isaacman to lead NASA; transportation secretary Sean Duffy had been running the agency in the interim.
The third was Vance’s persistent mediation. The vice president kept open lines of communication with Musk and his allies throughout the rift, people familiar with the matter said. Late last summer, Musk abandoned plans to launch a new political party, in part to preserve his relationship with Vance, who is widely seen as a likely 2028 presidential candidate. In November, Musk returned to the White House for a dinner Trump hosted for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — a visible sign of the détente. After Musk became a trillionaire, the president sent him a congratulatory note.
Privately, Trump has told aides that he and Musk will never be as close as they once were, according to the president’s aides, but the two now speak roughly once a month, discussing AI, China and world events, people with knowledge of the calls said. An administration review of SpaceX contracts initiated after the June 2025 spat had found that most of those contracts were critical to the Defense Department and NASA, the Journal previously reported; since then, the company has only become more embedded in America’s war machine.
The political stakes cut both ways. If Democrats win control of Congress in November, they are prepared to launch a wave of investigations into Trump and his family — and Musk, whose businesses depend on lucrative government contracts, could be a target as well. America PAC will coordinate with MAGA Inc., the primary Trump super PAC, which already holds more than $400 million. The Journal noted that the $100 million figure was earlier reported by Axios and The New York Times.
Musk has signaled he does not plan to be as visible as he was during the 2024 election or during his tenure overseeing DOGE. “I think I got a little too involved in politics,” he told The Economist last month.
In a statement, the White House said Trump “has built the greatest coalition in the history of American politics, full of patriots like Elon Musk who are deeply committed to preserving all the historic accomplishments of this administration.”