US President Donald Trump's online war with Tesla chief and DOGE head Elon Musk on Thursday reached a new low when the latter exposed Trump's affiliations with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—an allegation he quietly retracted on Saturday.
The feud, which began with a disagreement on Trump's sweeping tax-cut and tariffs bill—the “Big Beautiful Bill”—marked a sudden ending to Musk's relationship with Trump, days after completing his tenure as the head of America's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
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He urged the public to mark his now-deleted post for the future when the “truth will come out”.
"Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!" Musk had written.
The feud ended as suddenly as it had begun, with Musk agreeing to a post by billionaire hedge fund manager and Trump supporter Bill Ackman that called for peace between the two men, and the US president not saying anything more on the subject.
Even rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, urged the two to quit fighting online.
However, Musk continued to post minor criticisms of the US president, at one point even calling for a new political party “that actually represents the 80% in the middle”—for which he received an overwhelming 80 per cent agreement in the poll that was a part of the post.
As a result, Trump declined the White House call that had been scheduled on Friday to settle things with Musk, claiming that he was simply not interested.
Although Trump remains tight-lipped on the Epstein allegations, he did put up a Truth Social post with a screenshot of one of Epstein's lawyers claiming that Trump's name had not been a part of the Epstein files: another example of possible pressure that he had exerted on Musk.
While Musk's explosive Epstein allegation raised a lot of questions about Trump, his retraction of the post raises further questions on whether he might have been pressured to do so, ever since the White House call fell through.
“Oh it's okay ... It's going very well, never done better,” Trump had said about his feud with Musk, in a telephone call with Politico, despite saying earlier that the “great relationship” that he had with Musk was gone.
"Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will any more,” he had said.