Washington (United States) (AFP) – Donald Trump presented Elon Musk with the top US science medal on Thursday, as the rocket tycoon fully returned to the president’s orbit after an explosive bust-up. Six US tech titans received prestigious awards from the president at a Washington peace institute that was itself recently renamed after Trump. But all eyes were on trillionaire SpaceX and Tesla boss Musk following his acrimonious departure from Trump’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) last year.
Trump called Musk a “national treasure” and said that “Elon is our modern-day Thomas Edison,” referring to the American inventor of the lightbulb. “Elon, I want to congratulate you. You’re my friend, and all of that, but you are a very, very special guy,” Trump added at the summit, dubbed “Science: A New Golden Age.” Along with Musk, Google co-founder Sergei Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and AMD chief Lisa Su all received the National Medal of Science from Trump during the ceremony. Computer mogul Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella got the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, also the top US award in its field.
Trump and Musk gave an amiable if awkward performance on Thursday, with the president patting the tycoon on the back and giving him a wooden case containing his medal. The pair largely avoided eye contact. It was a far cry from May 2025 when Musk’s brief and tempestuous time at DOGE flamed out over his opposition to the White House’s “utterly insane” tax and spending bill. Musk—the biggest donor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign—had spent months working out of a small office in the White House complex as DOGE took a hatchet to the federal workforce and agencies. He appeared at Trump’s side in cabinet meetings and brought his young son X into the Oval Office alongside the president.
– Bitter falling out –
After they fell out, relations between the world’s most powerful person and its richest person quickly turned bitter. Trump threatened to deport the South African-born Musk, while Musk, who also owns the X social media platform, alleged links between Trump and late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But Musk has returned to the fold in recent months, and his SpaceX rockets have continued to be a lynchpin of the US space and defense program. He attended Trump’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping in September and then joined talks on artificial intelligence at the White House last week. Musk, Huang, and other leaders promised at that meeting to self-regulate against possible threats from artificial intelligence.
Trump has rejected calls for government oversight, dismissing warnings that AI could wipe out humanity and insisting it is crucial for what he calls the “Golden Age” of the US economy in his second term. Earlier Thursday, Trump said that anyone who does not use the term “super intelligence”—the term he wants people to use instead of AI—will be treated as “THE ENEMY.” At the medal event, Trump himself was presented with a frame containing the National Medal of Science posthumously awarded to his late uncle John Trump, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Trump’s uncle, who died in 1983, is a familiar character in Trump’s speeches. The 80-year-old president often says he inherited what he calls the “highest of IQs” from his uncle, citing “good genes.”
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