'Epstein's ghost comes back to haunt Trump as Musk trolls President'

Daily Mirror

2 days ago

Like thunder follows lightning, Elon Musk's spectacular public fall-out tonight with Donald Trump was as predictable as night follows day.
The bromance was never built to last. A billionaire with delusions of being America's saviour, and a career reality-TV president with a steel spine for betrayal - the only surprise is that it took this long to implode. Tonight, the dam burst.
'Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files,' Musk declared on X, the platform he owns. 'That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!'
Let that sink in. The world's richest man, once known as Trump's 'First Buddy', just accused the sitting US president of being named in classified government files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender whose name is synonymous with global elite scandal. No cryptic memes. No dog whistles. Just a nuclear accusation, live on the platform Musk controls.
And it didn't come out of nowhere. This bomb was wrapped in a detonator: Trump's £960 billion trillion spending 'big, beautiful' spending bill, which gutted electric vehicle tax credits and wiped nearly £29.5 billion off Tesla's value in a single day.
Musk's flagship company has now hit the skids. The man who once boasted of 'saving Western civilisation' by putting Trump back on Twitter now finds himself politically exiled and financially wounded by the very man he helped re-elect.
Of course, this was never just about policy. This is about ego, power, and two men who can't stand being second to anyone. Musk had reason to believe he was a kingmaker.
Last year, he poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump's campaign and used his platform to tilt the digital scales back in the then former president's favour. He was repaid, in his mind, with promises and access to the corridors of government. Those doors have now been slammed shut.
In a sense, the Epstein claim is Musk's final scorched-earth strategy. And in Trump, he's found the perfect foil: a man whose documented past with the late Wall Street financier is impossible to ignore. Let's not forget, Trump wasn't just an acquaintance of Prince Andrew's pal Epstein - they were tight.
'Terrific guy,' Trump once said of him in New York Magazine in 2002. 'He likes beautiful women… many of them on the younger side.'
The pair partied together in Palm Beach. Epstein was a frequent guest at Mar-a-Lago. Photos, videos, flight logs - the connections are not just alleged, they're archived.
Trump now claims he 'banned' Epstein from his clubs in the early 2000s and insists they weren't close. But the record says otherwise - and Musk knows it.
Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, promised the full Epstein file release earlier this year, only to deliver a limp 200-page 'Phase One' binder of already-public flight logs and contact lists. It was handed out only to Trump's sycophant supporters, with other media ignored. The public has, since quite rightly, asked: Where's the rest?
Now Musk has claimed the answer to the question is: Trump is the reason they've never been released. Is it true? We don't know. But the accusation itself has shattered whatever illusion remained that Musk and Trump were allies.
It's hard to walk back a claim like that. And it puts Trump's carefully curated distance from Epstein under the spotlight like never before. Before Musk's tweet, Trump, for his part, tried to brush off their growing fallout.
'I think he's suffering from a little Trump Derangement Syndrome,' he said earlier today, standing next to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. It was a shrug - a familiar play. Discredit the critic. Change the subject.
But it clearly rattled Musk. He didn't just troll the president. He accused him of being named in files concerning a global sex trafficking cover-up - on the record, on his own platform, in front of hundreds of billions.
It's a breathtaking rupture in American politics - one that may fracture the Republican party and pit Silicon Valley against Washington in open warfare. But more than anything, it was inevitable.
The Musk-Trump partnership was never a marriage. It was a transaction. And now the cheque's bounced. The real question is what comes next. Because this fight - with its billion-dollar body count and Epstein-shaped shadows - is far from over.