Elon Musk blasts Peter Navarro: ‘Dumber than a sack of bricks’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is sharply escalating his attacks on top Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro as he defends his car company and chafes against the administration’s tariff plans.

“Tesla has the most American-made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks,” Musk, Trump’s top campaign donor, wrote on X, the social media platform he owns.

“Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false,” Musk wrote in another post.

Musk was responding to Navarro’s contention in a CNBC interview on Monday that Musk is not a car manufacturer but a car “assembler” whose vehicles are made of many parts sourced from overseas.

Days earlier, Musk in a since-deleted X post said Navarro “ain’t built s---.” In a separate post, Musk questioned Navarro’s credentials, writing, “A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing.”

Musk currently works for Trump as head of the White House DOGE initiative. As Trump commits to his staunchly protectionist agenda, Musk has recently signaled his support for free-trade policies.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shrugged off questions about Musk’s attacks on his colleague.

“Whatever,” Leavitt told CNBC’s Eamon Javers. “We are the most transparent administration in history expressing our disagreements in public.”