Musk deletes Epstein tweet after Trump rift
Elon Musk has deleted a tweet in which he alleged that Donald Trump was 'in the Epstein files'.
The social media post was written on Thursday during a fierce war of words between the tech billionaire and the US president, after a dispute over Mr Trump's flagship spending Bill marked an abrupt end to their close alliance.
As the disagreement escalated, Mr Musk also suggested that his former boss should be removed from office.
'The Epstein files' is a phrase colloquially used to describe intelligence the US authorities hold on Jeffrey Epstein, the paedophile financier who died in 2019.
However, by Saturday morning, Mr Musk had deleted his post on X, in a sign the row could be winding down.
Mr Trump also appeared to suggest he was moving on from the spat, telling reporters during a flight to New Jersey: 'Honestly I've been so busy working on China, working on Russia, working on Iran... I'm not thinking about Elon Musk. I just wish him well.'
The row began when Mr Musk – who last week stepped down as head of the Department of Government Efficiency – criticised the president's upcoming Bill as a 'disgusting abomination' and claimed it would increase the national debt.
Mr Trump retaliated by saying the billionaire was upset because one of his allies had not been chosen for a role in the new Nasa administration.
The president also suggested Mr Musk was annoyed because the White House's 'big beautiful Bill' would end tax breaks for electric vehicles worth billions of dollars to his car company Tesla.
'He knew it better than almost anybody, and he never had a problem until right after he left,' Mr Trump said.
The president later said, during an Oval Office meeting with Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, that Mr Musk had 'Trump derangement syndrome'. The Republican later added that he was 'very disappointed' in the entrepreneur.
However, Mr Musk was quick to hit back, alleging that the president had only won last year's election because of his support.
'Without me, Trump would have lost the election. Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate... Such ingratitude,' he wrote on X.
The world's richest man then published his post about the president and the Epstein files – but provided no evidence to back up his claim.
Mr Trump and Epstein ran in the same social circles in New York and were pictured partying together on various occasions in the 1980s and 1990s.
Epstein killed himself in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
In February, Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, pledged to release the Epstein files. However, the 'phase one' documents that were released to a hand-picked group of conservative influencers contained information that was largely already in the public domain.
As the row escalated, Mr Musk said he would decommission his Dragon spacecraft, which is used by Nasa to deliver and collect astronauts from the International Space Station.
Mr Trump in turn threatened to cancel all the Tesla and SpaceX owner's government contracts. 'The easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts,' he said.
The president also reportedly considered selling or giving away the red Tesla car he purchased earlier this year.
Tesla shares tanked as the rift intensified, amid investor fears that Mr Trump might hinder the roll-out of self-driving cars in the US, hitting the company's growth potential.
Shares closed down 14.3 per cent on Thursday and lost about £111 billion, although the firm staged a partial recovery on Friday.
An administration official claimed Mr Musk was 'clearly having an episode', while Steve Bannon, Mr Trump's former adviser, encouraged the president to initiate a formal investigation into Mr Musk's immigration status and have him 'deported from the country immediately'.
As well as deleting the Epstein post, Mr Musk also appeared to walk back on his threat to decommission the Dragon spacecraft.
When an X user suggested Mr Musk and Mr Trump 'take a step back for a couple days', the Tesla chief executive wrote: 'Good advice. Ok, we won't decommission Dragon.'
However, the billionaire has continued to keep a poll pinned to the top of his X profile which invites users of the social media platform to vote on whether it is time for a new political party in the US.
Mr Musk wrote on Friday night: 'The people have spoken. A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80 per cent in the middle! This is fate.'
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