Elon Musk’s all-out war against President Trump reached its zenith on Thursday after the world’s richest man accused President Trump of personally blocking the “Epstein files” from being released. The broadside from Mr. Musk came after the president threatened to cancel all of the billionaire’s government contracts.

After spending a few days harshly criticizing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Mr. Musk claimed that the president is personally blocking the release of information about the deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

“Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!” Mr. Musk wrote. “Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.”

The attack from Mr. Musk came just minutes after the president said he could “save money” by getting rid of Mr. Musk’s contracts and subsidies. 

Before that threat, Mr. Musk said that the president would not be in office were it not for him, and the Republicans would not have won the House majority. The Senate majority would also be thinner, if it were not for his hundreds of millions of dollars in outside spending.  

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Mr. Musk wrote earlier in the day. “Such ingratitude.” 

The billionaire then put up a poll on his X account asking if it was “time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”

Amid Mr. Musk’s flurry of posts about how Republicans are failing the American people, Mr. Trump fired his own warning shot 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. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!” Mr. Trump wrote in one post. 

“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!” the president wrote in another. 

Within the hour, Tesla stock fell by more than seven percent. 

Mr. Musk responded to Mr. Trump’s threats, saying that it was a “lie” that the president would ever come after his contracts. “Go ahead, make my day…” Mr. Musk wrote. 

Mr. Trump was asked about the sudden meltdown from Mr. Musk while he was meeting with Chancellor Merz in the Oval Office on Thursday. The president said Mr. Musk only dislikes the budget bill because it eliminates tax credits for electric vehicles. Mr. Trump further claimed that Mr. Musk was upset that the White House pulled the nomination of the billionaire’s friend to be the NASA administrator. 

“I’d rather have him criticize me than the bill,” Mr. Trump told reporters Thursday. “Elon is upset because we took the EV mandate which was a lot of money for electric vehicles. … They want us to pay billions of dollars in [subsidies] and, you know, Elon knew this from the beginning.”

“I’m very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody,” Mr. Trump added. “All of the sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out we’re gonna have to cut the EV mandate.”

Mr. Trump also mentioned Mr. Musk’s longtime associate, Jared Isaacman, whose nomination to be NASA administrator was pulled shortly after Mr. Musk left his White House post. Mr. Isaacman had few friends left in the administration after Mr. Musk left and it came to the president’s attention that his nominee had donated to Democrats in the past. 

“He recommended somebody … to run NASA and I didn’t think it was appropriate and he happened to be a Democrat,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Isaacman. “We won, we get certain privileges, and one of the privileges is we don’t have to appoint a Democrat.”

Throughout the president’s Oval Office meeting with Mr. Merz, Mr. Musk was posting on X to refute the president’s claims. In one post, he said he had never seen the bill before it was passed by the House just after sunrise in May. In another, the billionaire sarcastically reposted an old message from Mr. Trump in 2013 when the future president criticized Republicans for lifting the debt limit. 

He directly addressed the president’s assertion that he only wants to kill the bill because of the EV tax credits that are set to be repealed. “Whatever,” Mr. Musk wrote of the president’s comments. 

“Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill,” Mr. Musk wrote.