By Nandita Bose and Jeff Mason WASHINGTON (Reuters) -When Donald Trump met privately with White House officials on Wednesday, there was little to suggest that the U.S. president was close to a public break with Elon Musk,

A timeline of the praises and insults that President Trump and Elon Musk have lobbed at each other shows how their volatile clash was years in the making.

WASHINGTON—Long-simmering tensions between President Trump and Elon Musk burst into the open on Thursday, as the two men traded barbs and insults, signaling the rupturing of a relationship that had been one of the most consequential in modern American politics.