Elon Musk Escalates Feud With Trump Adviser Peter Navarro in Scorched Earth Rant: ‘Dumber Than a Sack of Bricks’
(Jose Luis Magana/Evan Vucci/AP photos)
Elon Musk has ramped up his feud with President Donald Trump’s top trade adviser Peter Navarro with a storm of X posts, including one where he called the economist a “moron.”
Musk took aim at Navarro Tuesday morning, a day after Navarro chided the billionaire on CNBC.
“We all understand in the White House (and the American people understand) that Elon’s a car manufacturer, Navarro said during the interview. “But he’s not a car manufacturer — he’s a car assembler, in many cases.”
He added: “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. The electronics come from Taiwan.”
Navarro’s comments came after Musk criticized both Navarro and the tariff heavy trade policy he’s championing within the administration.
Musk fired back on Tuesday with a post on his X platform, arguing that Navarro is “truly a moron” whose remarks were “demonstrably false.”
And Musk wasn’t done.
More posts soon followed, including one where he called Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks.”
In one more swipe, he mocked Navarro as “Peter Retarrdo.”
It’s the latest in a saga of bickering among Trump’s inner circle.
Navarro drew Musk’s ire over the weekend after he blasted the Tesla CEO during a Fox News interview, arguing Musk’s self-interests as CEO of Tesla are driving his apparent skepticism about tariffs.
“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.”
During the same interview, Navarro denied having a rift with Musk, saying, “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.”
