As Donald Trump hosted leaders from the biggest US tech companies at a lavish White House state dining room dinner on Thursday night, there was one notable absence. Elon Musk, once inseparable from Trump and a constant, contentious presence in the White House, was not in attendance.
The dinner, which included Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Apple’s Tim Cook and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, was exactly the type of event where Musk would have sat at Trump’s right hand only a few months ago. Instead, the Tesla CEO stated on his social media platform X that he had been invited but could not make it. He said he planned to send a representative and spent the day on X posting a familiar stream of attacks on immigration and trans people.
The White House did not respond for comment on why Musk would not be at the dinner.
The event, which was to have been held on the newly paved-over Rose Garden, until a forecast of thunderstorms forced the event indoors, began with televised words of praise for the president from several of the assembled tech leaders, and a brief series of questions from reporters.
Musk’s absence, even if voluntary, is a stark turnaround from when Trump repeatedly joked following the election that “Elon won’t go home, I can’t get rid of him”. The vacant seat highlights a divide that has emerged between the two men since their very public falling out earlier this year, one that has seen Musk’s influence over the government wane despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars to re-elect Trump during the 2024 election.
Musk’s omission from the list of attendees also echoes one of the seminal moments of his political evolution, another White House event. In 2022, then president Joe Biden failed to invite the Tesla CEO to a summit on electric vehicles over concerns it would draw backlash from autoworkers’ unions. Musk, who had not yet publicly aligned himself with the Republican party, lashed out at the White House for the snub and declared that he would not vote for Biden. The move proved enormously costly for Democrats.
The incident clearly stuck with Musk, who like Trump has shown a tendency to harbor long-term grudges. Even on the day of Trump’s dinner, he reserved his ire for Biden rather than the current president, retweeting a clip of himself from 2023 addressing Biden’s snub with the post “I try not to start fights, but I do finish them”.
In the ensuing years, Musk has taken a hard turn to the political right. He has turned X into a bastion of far-right influencers, whom he frequently retweets to his more than 200 million followers. He has promoted false theories about Democrats conspiring to get immigrants to illegally vote en masse and embraced far-right political parties around the world. He also became Trump’s most vocal and deep-pocketed supporter, contributing nearly $300m to the re-election campaign and Republican causes.
Musk’s support for Trump placed him in a position of immense power after the president’s inauguration as the tech mogul established and led the so-called “department of government efficiency” and its sweeping dismantling of federal agencies. It also turned him into a prominent guest at political dinners and events, only a year after the British government did not invite him to a major tech summit as he made inflammatory anti-immigrant posts that claimed a “civil war” would take place in the UK.
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Since Musk and Trump’s relationship imploded in May over policy differences – Musk railed against Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill – which then snowballed into Musk accusing Trump of being in the files pertaining to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the xAI CEO has all but vanished from high-profile government events. Although Trump still praises Musk as a “genius”, he told reporters on Wednesday night that Musk has “got some problems” and the two have not been seen together since their public spat.
As Musk has feuded with Trump and ceded his place in the White House, however, rival tech moguls have grown closer with the administration and filled some of the vacuum. Earlier this month, Trump hosted Cook, the Apple CEO, at the White House, who in turn gifted the president a 24-karat-gold souvenir. Meanwhile, Trump aides have discussed cutting Musk’s government contracts, according to the Wall Street Journal, only to find upon review that doing so would endanger too many key operations.
If Musk had attended Thursday’s dinner, it would have created an awkward arrangement as he is suing two of the companies whose leaders were in attendance: Apple and OpenAI, helmed by his former collaborator and now nemesis Altman. As with Trump, Musk has also attacked Gates for his ties to Epstein after the Microsoft founder accused him of “killing children” through Doge’s cuts to foreign aid.
