WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump has said his relationship with Elon Musk is over.

"I would assume so, yeah," Trump told NBC News on Saturday, when asked if he thought the pair's close relationship had ended. He replied "No" when asked if he wished to mend the damaged ties.

The comments were Trump's latest since the epic fallout between him and Musk unraveled on social media.

It came after the tech billionaire — who donated millions to Trump's election campaign and became a White House aide — publicly criticized the president's tax and spending bill, a key domestic policy.

A majority of Republicans have fallen in line behind the president. Vice-President JD Vance said that Musk had "gone so nuclear" and may never be welcomed back into the fold.

Vance told podcaster Theo Von that it was a "big mistake" for the Tesla and SpaceX CEO to attack the president.

For weeks, Musk had been criticizing Trump's signature legislation — dubbed the "Big Beautiful Bill" — as it made its way through Congress.

He said that, if passed, the bill would add trillions of dollars to the national deficit and "undermine" the work he did as the head of Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, and its efforts to cut government spending.

Shortly after leaving Doge after 129 days in the job, Musk posted on his social media site X that the bill was a "disgusting abomination" — but did not criticize Trump directly.

On Thursday, however, Trump told reporters he was "disappointed" with Musk's behavior.

Musk responded with a flurry of posts on X, saying that Trump would have lost the election without him and accusing Trump of being implicated in files of Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in jail awaiting sex trafficking charges.

He has since deleted the post and Epstein's lawyer has come out denying the accusations.

Trump responded on his social media platform Truth Social, saying that Musk had gone "crazy". In one post, he threatened to cut Musk's contracts with the federal government.

In his interview with NBC News on Saturday, Trump said Musk had been "disrespectful to the office of the president".

"I think it's a very bad thing, because he's very disrespectful. You could not disrespect the office of the president," Trump said.

Musk, the world's richest man, who donated roughly $250m to Trump's presidential campaign, suggested during the social media feud that he might back some of Trump's opponents during next year's midterm elections, throwing his support behind challengers to the lawmakers who supported Trump's tax bill.

When asked about the prospect of Musk backing Democratic candidates that run against Republicans, Trump said he would face "serious consequences". — BBC