The split in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet exploded into open warfare with Elon Musk posting a slur to describe the president’s top trade adviser Peter Navarro.
The DOGE billionaire blasted the architect of Trump’s tumultuous tariffs policy as being “dumber than a sack of bricks” and called him “Peter Retarrdo” in an apparent reference to the slur “retard.”
The feud between the two men escalated after Trump appeared to side with Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in agreeing to negotiate with foreign leaders over tariffs.
Navarro and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had reportedly urged the president to take a hard line with his punitive levies and make them stick.
After Musk appealed to Trump over the weekend to soften his stance, the president agreed on Monday to negotiate, with Bessent claiming that up to 70 world leaders were lining up to talk.
On Tuesday morning, Musk ramped up his online feud with Navarro, calling him “Peter Retarrdo” in a post on his X social media platform. Use of the slur has been increasing among MAGA supporters, with the world’s richest man previously agreeing with a post that described some Americans as “retarded.”
Musk also wrote in a separate post on Tuesday: “Tesla has the most American-made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks.
“Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false,” his diatribe continued, referring again to Navarro’s attack on Tesla.
“By any definition whatsoever, Tesla is the most vertically integrated auto manufacturer in America with the highest percentage of US content. Navarro should ask the fake expert he invented, Ron Vara,” he wrote in another message.
Musk was referring to a fictional character Navarro fabricated to offer opinions about Chinese imports in his 2011 book, Death by China. Ron Vara is an anagram of Navarro. He described it as “a whimsical device.”
Navarro had dismissed Musk’s plea for “zero tariffs” for Europe and called the Tesla billionaire a “car assembler.”
“He’s a car person. That’s what he does, and he wants the cheap foreign parts,” added Navarro.
Musk posted on X over the weekend that Navarro’s “PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing.”
Both men then seemed to be playing down the rift, saying it wasn’t personal between them.
But the feud erupted again after Navarro appeared to have lost his bid to persuade Trump to stick to his guns on the tariff levels.
Responding to CNBC, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said of Musk’s online attacks on Navarro: “Whatever. We are the most transparent administration in history, expressing our disagreements in public.”
Trump kept the tariff hawks and doves guessing before folding as the money markets melted down on Monday for a third day since the tariffs were announced.
Bessent, who had been briefing patience to world leaders since “Liberation Day,” said Israel, South Korea, and Japan would be the first of up to 70 countries he claimed were clamoring to negotiate.
Meanwhile, a White House tweet promoting a Financial Times article by Navarro suggesting there would not be any negotiating on the tariffs was deleted. A “takedown” of Lutnick in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal also suggested White House insiders were briefing against the commerce secretary.
On Monday, Trump said the tariffs could be permanent or negotiable.
Twenty-four hours later, he had clearly made up his mind, posting on Truth Social that the South Koreans were on their way for talks about the tariffs and bragging: “In any event, we have the confines and probability of a great DEAL for both countries. Their top TEAM is on a plane heading to the U.S., and things are looking good.”
