The alliance between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk is spectacularly imploding as the world’s most prominent bromance collapsed into mutual public trolling. 

In an online back-and-forth with Donald Trump on Thursday (local time), Elon Musk claims that documents tied to the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein have not been released because they mention the President. 

“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,” Musk wrote on X on Thursday morning (local time). 

“Mark this post for the future,” he added in a separate post. “The truth will come out.” 

Musk, who loves to provoke and tease on social media, presented no evidence that he has reason to know what is in the documents. 

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he was “very disappointed” in Elon Musk, delivering his sharpest criticism to date of the tech billionaire who served as a key political ally during the 2024 campaign and his first months in office. 

“Elon and I had a great relationship,” he said. “I don’t know if we will anymore.” 

The remarks marked a highly public inflection point in the alliance between Trump and Musk, which has sharply deteriorated in recent weeks as the tech billionaire left his post at the US DOGE Service and began publicly criticising the One Big Beautiful Bill, the cornerstone of Trump’s legislative agenda. 

Trump suggested that the Tesla CEO’s criticisms of the legislation were rooted in his concerns that the bill would slash subsidies for owners of electric vehicles. 

“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,” Trump said. “All of a sudden he had a problem. And he only developed the problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate, because that’s billions and billions of dollars.” 

Within minutes, Musk fired back on X: “False, this bill was never shown to me even once,” he wrote. 

Trump said he expected that Musk’s criticism of the bill would not be his last word. 

“He hasn’t said bad about me personally, but I’m sure that will be next,” Trump said, adding that he thinks Musk “misses the place”. 

Trump suggested such hostility was common among officials who departed from his administration. 

“It’s sort of Trump Derangement syndrome, I guess they call it,” he said. 

Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Martine Powers contributed to this report. 

-Cat Zakrzewski, Washington Post