'Extraordinary moment' as US watches 'unravelling of bromance' of Trump and Musk
CNN's Dana Bash was stunned by the events that unfolded between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk during an Oval Office press conference Thursday.
Musk live tweeted responses as Trump answered reporters' questions about the Tesla founder's disdain for the spending bill that's now in the Senate.
"The most interesting and perhaps important issue — political issue and policy issue — is what President Trump said about his now former friend, at least it seems, Elon Musk," Bash said on CNN shortly after the press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz.
"It seems as though we saw kind of the unraveling of a bromance, real time. And what our viewers saw was what it turned out to be one side of a fight. The other side was Elon Musk, real time, using his platform X to respond and kind of push back on many of the things that President Trump said."
Bash then showed a scroll of Musk's tweets in response to the president's statements, calling it an "extraordinary moment just a few days after he gave a big, glowing goodbye to Elon Musk from the White House."
"Yeah, it's not even a week, Dana, since we saw them both praise each other from the Oval Office. Two days later now, and actually the first time reporters are actually having the opportunity to ask the president about this," said Correspondent Alayna Treene "We're now seeing this completely fraying relationship on full display. It's very remarkable, given just how close...the president and Musk have been for months now, really him being one of the president's favorite people on this white house complex."
Treene described the president's tone as "strikingly somber."
"You could see kind of the emotion in his tone and on his face as he was discussing this. He said, quote, 'I've always liked Elon.'"