Musk slams 'moron' Trump aide in deepening tariff spat
WASHINGTON
(L-R) Senior Counselor to the President for Trade and Manufacturing, Peter Navarro, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and US homeland security advisor Stephen Miller, and Elon Musk speak inside the Oval Office of the White House before boarding Marine One with unseen US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC on March 14, 2025.
Elon Musk blasted President Donald Trump's senior trade advisor Peter Navarro as "truly a moron" in a growing rift over the U.S. tariff policy.
The extraordinary public spat came after Navarro described the Tesla boss and so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief as "not a car manufacturer" but "a car assembler" who relies on imported parts.
Musk has previously signaled his opposition to the president's new import tariffs.
"Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false," Musk posted on X, under a clip of Navarro saying that Musk "wants the cheap foreign parts."
Musk doubled down in a series of other messages, saying that "Tesla has the most American-made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks."
There have also been conflicting messages from within the White House itself.
The row came a day after Navarro insisted in an opinion piece in the Financial Times that the tariffs were "not a negotiation", only for Trump to admit later that he was in fact open to some negotiations.
The spat is all the more unusual because of the mesh of loyalties involved.
Trump has strongly defended Musk after a series of vandalism attacks and protests against Tesla over DOGE's cost-cutting drive -- even turning the White House into a pop-up showroom for the electric vehicles in a show of support.
Navarro, however, has proven his loyalty to Trump by serving a four-month jail sentence for contempt after refusing to testify to Congress on the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.
