President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk, once close allies, recently went through a highly publicized falling out with each other, in which Musk made some rather controversial critiques and accusations against his supposed friend.

Musk later expressed "regret" and walked back some of his critical commentary, but inside sources suggest that the damage is already done and the relationship is now too broken to be repaired, according to People magazine.

Yet, in public comments, Trump has signaled that he is open to the idea of reconciliation with Musk, despite some of the harsh things that both men said about each other amid the brief public feud.

Musk burns his bridge with Trump

Shortly after Musk stepped down from his role as the nominal head of the Department of Government Efficiency and left the White House at the end of May, he began to sharply criticize the so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill" that Congress was working on to transform President Donald Trump's policy agenda into law.

Musk's criticism was initially focused on the lack of significant spending cuts in the multi-trillion-dollar bill, which he said ignored and undermined all of his hard work with DOGE to reduce wasteful and fraudulent federal spending, but it wasn't long before he began attacking Trump directly.

That included claims that Trump wouldn't have won the 2024 election without Musk's help, as well as that Trump was covering up the government's files on deceased convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein because of his prior alleged ties to the disgraced financier, among other things.

About a week later, however, Musk appeared to walk all of that back when he posted on X, "I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far."

Sources say too much damage has been done to the relationship

Yet, according to multiple unnamed inside sources who spoke exclusively with People magazine, Musk's "apology" for what he said about President Trump may not be enough to straighten out their troubled friendship.

"It sort of evolved from love to transactional to now pure avoidance," one source said of the Trump-Musk relationship. "And Trump doesn’t forget."

The anonymous source added of Trump, "He may say something acceptable for public consumption, but after what Elon wrote on social media, and despite his apology, Trump’s relationship with Musk will never again be the same."

Another unidentified source said that Musk was "so far from good terms with Trump," and further observed, "Nobody trusts you again after you go that nuclear."

Trump responds to Musk's "apology"

As for President Trump, he spoke exclusively to the New York Post about Musk's purported "apology" and said, "I thought it was very nice that he did that," though he declined to say whether he would let what happened slide or hold a grudge.

He further told the Post's Miranda Devine that while he was "a little disappointed" by what Musk had said, he noted, "Look, I have no hard feelings. I was really surprised that that happened. He went after a bill that’s phenomenal. … He just -- I think he feels very badly that he said that, actually."

When asked about the possibility of returning the once-close relationship to what it had previously been, Trump stated, "I guess I could, but we have to straighten out the country," and added, "And my sole function now is getting this country back to a level higher than it’s ever been. And I think we can do that."