Elon Musk took to X to fire off a slew of posts against Peter Navarro, the president’s top trade adviser, with one calling him a “moron.”
Musk’s tirade came Tuesday, a day after Navarro went on CNBC and called Musk a “car assembler,” per Mediaite.
“We all understand in the White House (and the American people understand) that Elon’s a car manufacturer, Navarro said. “But he’s not a car manufacturer — he’s a car assembler, in many cases.”
“If you go to his Texas plant, a good part of the engines that he gets (which in the EV case are the batteries) come from Japan and come from China,” Navarro added. “The electronics come from Taiwan.”
Musk has previously Navarro’s tariff-heavy trade plan.
Musk volleyed back at Navarro by saying he is “truly a moron” on X.
Musk continued with more posts.
In one post, Musk called Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks.”
In another post, Musk referred to Navarro as “Peter Retarrdo.”
Navarro recently questioned Musk’s “self-interests as CEO of Tesla are driving his apparent skepticism about tariffs,” per the outlet.
“Every country around the world cheats us,” Navarro said. “But it’s like fingerprints — they all do it in different ways. But it all comes down to the non-tariff cheating. It was interesting to hear Elon Musk at the beginning talk about a zero-tariff zone with Europe. He doesn’t understand that. And the thing that’s, I think, important about Elon to understand, he sells cars. That’s what he does.”
Navarro continued, saying he had no beef with Musk.
“There’s no rift here. Look, Elon, he’s got X, he got a big microphone. We don’t mind him saying whatever he wants, but just the American people need to understand that we understand what that’s all about, and it’s fine. It’s fine,” Navarro said.
