Trump-Musk, it's war: the president threatens to stop government contracts, the billionaire brings up the "Epstein files"

We had loved each other so much, or perhaps tolerated each other for mutual convenience. The relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk , US president and his main financier, so much so as to deserve the call to the White House to lead the Doge , the Department for Government Efficiency created to cut at least 2 thousand billion in state spending, has definitively foundered .

The two had engaged in smiles and even handed over the “golden key” to the White House just a few days ago, when Musk's first criticisms of the “ Big Beautiful Bill ” were already known, the spending bill signed by the president that will increase the American deficit by at least 3 thousand billion dollars in 10 years, the opposite of what the billionaire of South African origins had hoped for.

But no one would have expected such a violent verbal war to erupt on social media in the space of a few days. The clash was played out remotely: Trump at the White House, while he hosted an astonished German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in front of journalists, and Musk on his social network, X.

The battle began when reporters asked the tycoon to account for Musk's harsh criticism, who had gone so far as to call the budget law " a disgusting abomination ." Shortly before the meeting in the Oval Office, Musk had then dug up an old tweet from 2012 in which Trump blamed Congress for the deficit: "I couldn't agree more," Musk wrote sarcastically. And citing another even older post by Trump, he added: "Where did this man go? Was he replaced by a lookalike?"

Keeping track of the exchanges between the two is complicated. Trump told reporters he was “ surprised ” and “ disappointed ,” adding that he would have preferred Musk to attack him personally rather than attack the law. “ Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we still have that ,” the president commented.

The clash practically becomes a long-distance confrontation, with Trump revealing to reporters that “ Elon knew the details of this law better than anyone else and it was absolutely no problem for him until he found out it removed incentives for electric vehicles .” Musk practically responds live via X: “False, this law was never shown to me once , and it was passed in the middle of the night so quickly that no one in Congress had a chance to read it!”

So the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX launches a survey to his huge audience of followers on X, proposing to " create a new political party in America that truly represents the 80% that is in the center" and claiming to have played a key role in Trump's victory, thanks to his financial support and more.

The tone is getting louder and it is here that Musk drops the real bombshell. “ Trump is in Epstein’s files . This is the real reason why they have not been made public. The truth will come out ,” he writes on X, referring to the dossiers on the activities and “friendships” of the American financier Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in a New York prison on August 10, 2019, a month after being arrested for child sex trafficking .

A low blow for Trump, notoriously a friend of Epstein before his arrest on charges of having created, in the early 2000s, a “harem” of young girls, including minors, to satisfy the sexual pleasures of himself and his circle of friends.

The response was not long in coming, with the tycoon threatening his former ally to hit him where it hurts most: his wallet. Trump then threatened to take away “subsidies and government contracts” from Musk , “the best way to save billions and billions in the budget”. A threat that did not seem to have stopped Musk, who replied that then “SpaceX will begin the dismantling of Dragon”, an orbital capsule essential to NASA's activities, only to then backtrack, probably so as not to lose a contract worth almost 5 billion dollars.

Steve Bannon , one of Elon Musk's most ardent opponents and the "ideologue" of Trump's first presidency, has intervened forcefully in the war between the two former friends. The far-right journalist has advised the president to cancel all contracts with the Tesla and Space X boss and to launch several investigations into the richest man in the world. "They should launch a formal investigation into his immigration status , because I firmly believe that he is an illegal immigrant and should be deported from the country immediately," was his "advice" according to the New York Times.