Elon Musk says he regrets some posts about Donald Trump

Billionaire Elon Musk has said he regrets some of the posts he made about US President Donald Trump during their war of words on social media.

"They went too far," he wrote on his social media platform X.

The two were embroiled in a public fallout after the Tesla owner stepped back from his White House role and called Trump's tax bill a "disgusting abomination".

His post comes after Trump said he was open to the possibility of reconciliation in an interview with the New York Post on Wednesday. The president said he was a "little disappointed" about the fallout, but there were "no hard feelings".

"I think he feels very badly that he said that," Trump said of Musk's blistering social media barrage.

The budget, which includes huge tax breaks and more defence spending, was passed by the House of Representatives last month and is now being considered by senators.

Musk urged Americans to call their representatives in Washington to "kill the bill" as he believed it would "cause a recession in the second half of the year".

The tech entrepreneur claimed, without evidence, that Trump appears in unreleased government files linked to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The White House rubbished those claims.

In response, Trump said Musk had "lost his mind" and threatened to cancel his government contracts, which have an estimated value of $38bn (£28bn). A significant chunk of that goes to Musk's space technology company SpaceX.

"I think it's a very bad thing, because he's very disrespectful. You could not disrespect the office of the president," Trump said in an interview with NBC on Saturday.

Musk appeared to have deleted many of his posts over the weekend, including one calling for Trump's impeachment.

Musk was the largest donor for Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and had been considered the president's right-hand man.

Former Trump aide Steve Bannon called for Musk, who was born in South Africa, to be deported.

US Vice-President JD Vance told reporters on Wednesday that while Trump was frustrated with Musk, the president does not want a long-term feud with the Tesla CEO.

Vance also said he had spoken to both Trump and Musk about the billionaire donor remaining supportive of the administration.

Most Republicans have called for the two men to reconcile, while Democrats have watched on as the feud unfolded.

Their fallout came shortly after Musk left the task force he headed called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), which he had promised would make trillions of dollars of federal spending cuts, 129 days into the job. So far, those cuts appear to have been smaller. After his departure, many of the Doge staff he hired have stayed on at a variety of federal agencies.