Donald Trump met with billionaire Elon Musk, his once trusted adviser with whom the president had a spectacular public falling out, at a memorial event for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, raising speculation that the two could be reconciling.
Trump shook hands with and chatted to Musk, who once led the president’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which took a hatchet to the US federal workforce and agencies in the early months of Trump’s second administration.
The pair sat in the stands of a stadium in Glendale, Arizona, where tens of thousands had gathered to pay tribute to Kirk, who was shot dead on 10 September at a Utah university campus.
Video of the two was shared by the official White House account on social media platform X, which Musk owns.
Musk donated more than $270m to Trump’s presidential campaign, barnstorming key battleground states for the Republican.
After the election, he oversaw the launch of the DOGE, a controversial initiative that eliminated thousands of government jobs deemed by the agency to be part of a pattern of waste, fraud and abuse.
