- Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Donald Trump, the president of the United States, are fully engaged in a mud-slinging battle online. Trump said he was “very disappointed in Elon” for attacking his “big, beautiful bill.” Then Musk said “without me, Trump would have lost the election.” Trump doubled down, saying the easiest way to save the government money is “to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.” Finally, Musk said “time to drop the really big bomb. [Trump] is in the Epstein files.”
Just three hours after Musk moved the target of his internet ire on Thursday from Trump’s spending bill to Trump himself, the 53-year-old Tesla CEO said, “Time to drop the really big bomb. @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.”
He ended his post with, “Have a great day, DJT!”
Musk did not provide any evidence to support his claims.
Tesla stock is down over 16% as of 3:30 p.m. ET Thursday.
While Trump is mentioned in Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs, and the two men had been photographed together for many years, Trump has distanced himself from Epstein’s alleged crimes, so it’s unclear what Musk is accusing Trump of, exactly. Fortune has reached out to Musk for more information. It’s worth noting that Musk himself was also photographed with Ghislaine Maxwell, who in 2021 was found guilty of child sex trafficking, among other offenses, in connection with Epstein.
For what it’s worth, the Justice Department has said it’s continually working to review and release more Epstein-related materials, but many on both sides of the aisle are unhappy with how slowly that’s happening.
The back-and-forth between two of the world’s most powerful men began when Musk took to X, née Twitter, to criticize Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that notably calls to end the $7,500 electric-vehicle subsidies that Tesla has benefited from for years. Musk called the “massive, outrageous, pork-filled” spending bill a “disgusting abomination” on Tuesday.
“This spending bill contains the largest increase in the debt ceiling in US history!” Musk wrote. “It is the Debt Slavery Bill.”
On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he had spoken to Trump about Musk’s X posts. “He’s not delighted that Elon did a 180 on that,” Johnson told reporters.
By Thursday, Trump was asked in the Oval Office how he felt about about Musk coming out against the spending bill.
“I would have won Pennsylvania regardless of Elon,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “I’m very disappointed with Elon. He knew this bill better than anyone and he only developed a problem when he found out I would cut the EV mandate.”
In response, Musk dug into Trump on X. “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” he wrote.
Trump, on Thursday afternoon, took to Truth Social to respond to Musk’s jabs.
“Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” he added. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
Trump and Musk have a complex history that dates back to Trump’s first presidency. Musk joined two of Trump’s advisory councils after winning the 2016 election, but stepped down from both councils after the president pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, saying on Twitter at the time, “Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”
Things got particularly sour between the two men in 2022, when Trump went in on Musk in a brutal Truth Social post, saying, “when Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocket ships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
