President Trump once declared that he loved Tesla and even bought a Model S to show his support for Elon Musk as the electric vehiclemaker’s stock plunged. 

Now, the car may become a casualty of the public feud between the two men. 

In March, Mr. Trump made a very public display of backing Tesla at the White House. The company delivered five of its models for Mr. Trump to inspect. During the event, which received widespread media coverage, the president called them “beautiful,” and he purchased a red Tesla Model S, even though he said he would not be able to drive it. The car has sat in the White House’s parking lot.

After a war of words erupted on Thursday between the two men — which now appears to have calmed down a bit — a senior White House official told the Sun that Mr. Trump “is thinking about” getting rid of his Tesla. 

The possible sale or donation of Mr. Trump’s Tesla comes after Mr. Musk left his job at the Department of Government Efficiency and began to attack the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act due to concerns it will lead America into “debt slavery.” He also said the president’s tariffs will “cause a recession in the second half of this year.”

The precise cause of the feud is unclear. During an event in the Oval Office on Thursday, Mr. Trump said he was “disappointed” with Mr. Musk’s comments and attributed them to the Republicans’ decision to eliminate from the bill subsidies for electric vehicles. He posted on Truth Social that the “easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.”

In a separate post, Mr. Trump said the billionaire businessman had been “wearing thin” and “just went CRAZY” over the elimination of the subsidies. 

Later, Mr. Musk said he was dropping a “really big bomb” and claimed the Trump administration had not released files on sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein because they would implicate the president. He also threatened to decommission the Dragon space capsule, which is used to transport astronauts to the International Space Station. However, he appeared to walk back the threat after an account on X with fewer than 200 followers told him to “cool off and take a step back for a couple days.”

“Good advice. Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon,” Mr. Musk responded. 

By Thursday evening, it appeared that the feud was cooling down. When Politico asked Mr. Trump about his relationship with Mr. Musk, the president said, “Oh, it’s okay. It’s going very well, never done better.”

Mr. Musk also responded to a hedge fund billionaire, Bill Ackman, who urged the two to “make peace” because “we are much stronger together,” writing, “You’re not wrong.”

However, Mr. Trump does not appear eager to speak to Mr. Musk. After Politico reported that a call had been scheduled on Friday to “broker a peace,” the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told NBC News there are “no plans for that today.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump told CNN, “I won’t be speaking to him for a while, I guess, but I wish him well.”

“I’m not even thinking about Elon. He’s got a problem. The poor guy’s got a problem,” the president added.