U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday strongly criticized European Union tech regulators for fining Musk's social media company X, calling the bloc's move "obnoxious" and saying he didn't understand how they could justify the move. "Europe is going in some bad directions," Trump told reporters at a White House event. He said he expected to get a full report on the EU fine later on Monday.
"I don't understand how they could do that," Trump said, saying Musk didn't call him to ask for help.
"Europe has to be very careful," Trump added.
The EU fined X 120 million euros last Friday for violating EU digital rules. Musk later posted: "The EU should be abolished and sovereignty should be returned to individual countries so that governments can better represent their people."
U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Federal Communications Commission Chairman (FCC) Brendan Kahl, condemned the move as an attack on U.S. companies.
EU regulators said X breached transparency obligations, including failing to provide public data to researchers, maintaining an incomplete ad repository, and using deceptive designs in its Blue V verification system.
EU technology chief Henna Virkkunen defended the fine as appropriate and stressed that the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) "has nothing to do with censorship". The European Commission said its law does not target any nationality and is only defending its digital standards.