Washington Post: “After Bessent and Musk exited the Oval Office and began walking down the hallway, the two men started to exchange insults… Bessent brought up Musk’s claims that he would uncover more than $1 trillion in wasteful and fraudulent government spending, which Musk had not succeeded at doing.”

Said Bessent: “You’re a fraud. You’re a total fraud.”

“Musk then rammed his shoulder into Bessent’s rib cage ‘like a rugby player,’ Bannon said, and Bessent hit him back. Multiple people stepped in to break up the scrum as the two men reached the national security adviser’s office, and Musk was shuffled out of the West Wing.”

“Less than two days after Elon Musk slammed President Donald Trump over the megabill moving through Congress, the billionaire appeared to remove several of his most scathing posts on X that targeted the president, including one that insinuated Trump was in the Epstein files,” ABC News reports.

New York Times: “Another of Mr. Musk’s deleted posts was a vow that his company SpaceX would decommission its Dragon spacecraft, which NASA has used to transport crew to the International Space Station.”

“Vice President JD Vance said Elon Musk is making a ‘huge mistake’ in going after Donald Trump and expressed hopes the billionaire will come back into the fold following the public feud that unfolded,” Bloomberg reports.

Said Vance: “I’m always going to be loyal to the president and I hope that eventually Elon kind of comes back into the fold. Maybe that’s not possible now because he’s gone so nuclear, but I hope it is.”

Washington Post: “Trump declined to go all-out in his attacks on Musk and counseled the vice president to show restraint in his comments about Musk, preserving a possible bridge.”

“I will apologize profusely as soon as there is a full dump of the Epstein files.”

— Elon Musk, in a post on X that he later deleted.

“President Trump is blaming Elon Musk’s behavior on drug use as the acrimonious blowup of their partnership left both men — who lobbed online insults and threats at each other on Thursday — with a lot at risk,” the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Trump has been telling associates over the last 24 hours that Mr. Musk’s ‘crazy’ behavior is linked to his drugs.”

Politico: Trump tries to move on from feud.

New York Times: “The Pentagon and NASA remain intensely reliant on SpaceX, Mr. Musk’s rocket launch and space-based communications company, to get to orbit and move government data across the world.”

“But there are options available to the president that could make Mr. Musk’s relationship with the federal government much more difficult than it has been so far in Mr. Trump’s second administration.”

“Mr. Trump’s most accessible weapon to punish Mr. Musk is the ability to instruct federal regulators to intensify oversight of his business operations, reversing a slowdown in regulatory actions that benefited Mr. Musk’s businesses after Mr. Trump was elected.”

Tim Higgins: Why would Musk pick a fight with Trump?

“For once, President Donald Trump was trying to be the adult in the room,” The Atlantic reports.

“Trump and Elon Musk, two billionaires with massive egos and combustible temperaments, had forged an unlikely friendship over the past year, one built on proximity, political expediency, and, yes, a touch of genuine warmth. Relations between the president and his top benefactor had grown somewhat strained in recent weeks, as Trump began to feel that Musk had overstayed his welcome in the West Wing. Musk had suggested privately that he could stay on at the White House, an offer that Trump gently declined… But Musk was still given a gracious send-off last Friday—complete with a large golden, albeit ceremonial, key—aimed at keeping the mercurial tech baron more friend than foe.”

“The peace didn’t last even a week.”