Name: Trump-Musk row explodes as billionaire claims President named in Epstein files | BBC News
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In the US, a formerly key political partnership is imploding in spectacular fashion tonight as a bitter war of words develops between Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

During a press conference in the Oval Office, President Trump said he was surprised and disappointed at Mr Musk's criticism of a key piece of his legislation.

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Elon Musk responded on the social media platform X, which he owns, with a series of increasingly disparaging remarks about his former boss,

calling him ungrateful, saying that his tariffs will cause a recession, and alleging that he is named in the files of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

A golden key to the White House was Elon Musk's leaving present.

Now, less than a week later, Donald Trump might want to think about changing the locks.

Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if it will anymore. I was surprised.

Today, the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was the Oval Office guest star, but Elon Musk and his criticism of Mr. Trump's spending bill dominated the conversation, to the President's obvious irritation.

But I'm very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here, better than you people.

He knew everything about it, he had no problem with it. All of a sudden, he had a problem.

Just minutes later, Elon Musk replied on X, saying, false, this bill was never shown to me even once, and was passed in the dead of night, so fast almost no one in Congress could even read it.

Mr. Musk obviously adored being in the spotlight as he campaigned alongside Donald Trump.

Today, he's claiming that without him, and the more than $250 million he donated, the President would have lost the election.

They were once seen together everywhere, now their row is being conducted in plain sight, on social media.

Mr. Trump on Truth Social upped the ante with, "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!"

Musk called that an obvious lie, and then really escalated the abuse.

Suggesting Donald Trump has withheld files related to Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested on charges of sex trafficking and died by suicide in jail, because he's named in them.

Mr. Musk tweeted, "Time to drop the really big bomb, Donald Trump is in the Epstein files, that's the real reason they've not been made public, have a nice day, DJT."

Mr. Musk and his chainsaw were brought into government to aggressively cut government spending, a pointless exercise he thinks, if President Trump will blow all the savings on tax cuts in his spending bill.

You know I was like disappointed to see the massive spending bill frankly, which increases the budget deficit not just decrease it, and I reminds the work that the Doge team is doing.

Donald Trump is now suggesting the easiest way to save money would be to terminate Elon Musk's dollars in government contracts and subsidies.

It was probably inevitable this bromance would turn sour, but no one expected it to go this bad this fast.

We'll be speaking to Sarah in a moment, but first our business editor Simon Jack is here.

Simon, Elon Musk known as the world's richest man, is he still?

He still is, but blimey this has been an expensive foray into politics.

I reckon Tesla shares are down 14% today, mainly on that comment about losing subsidies and contracts, that's the real killer here.

It's not about the personalities, it's about the money.

So I reckon Tesla shares have lost 140 billion dollars worth today, he owns about a seventh of that, so you're about 20 billion down just on the day.

That would be enough to put him in the top 10 of richest people in the UK on his losses just today.

I reckon since the high point, the bromance, the height of the bromance, Tesla shares are down some 40%, so that's probably cost him about 70 billion.

And don't forget, big losses also potentially on SpaceX.

Now SpaceX shares aren't publicly traded, but the US has largely outsourced a lot of their satellite program to Elon Musk, that's worth hundreds of billions as well, 350 billion, he owns 42% of that.

If that was a public traded stock, I think it would be down even more than Tesla.

So by my reckoning, since the height of their bromance, he's lost over 100 billion dollars.

There are only 14 people in the history of the world who've ever made that much money.

So as I say, one of the most expensive forays into politics of all time.

Huge figures there, Simon, thank you very much.

Let's go back to Sarah Smith in Washington.

And Sarah, this is all spectacular theatre, but what are the real world consequences of this spat?

Yeah, well this could be really important for the Trump administration, an administration that this time last week, Elon Musk was at the absolute heart of, and as he was leaving, said he wanted to remain a close advisor to Donald Trump.

Now on social media, he's going so far as suggesting that Donald Trump ought to be impeached and replaced with the Vice President J.D. Vance.

And it could really matter also, because obviously Elon Musk has a very loud voice, he owns his own social media platform X, so he can make his views and his criticism very much heard.

But also he has that enormous checkbook, albeit he's lost a lot of money today, he still has a lot that he could spend.

He had promised $100 million to be spent on political groups that are controlled by Donald Trump.

He might be more likely to target that at representatives and senators who say, for instance, vote for this great big spending bill.

He could then use his cash to target them to try and get them replaced by other candidates.

That's something that representatives do genuinely worry about.

And Elon Musk has a big enough checkbook to make that a real threat.

So he can use his money to continue to try to influence policy.

And then today, on social media, among all the other things he's been saying, he's even suggested that he might start his own political party, which he could afford to finance.

So far, he's had almost 2 million responses to that, with 80% of them encouraging him to set up his own party.