Elon Musk dug the knife into Donald Trump’s side again on Saturday as the fallout over the White House’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation continues to damage the president and his team.
The Twitter and Tesla billionaire weighed in as a response to an X user who screenshotted a particularly oddly-worded Truth Social post from Trump on Saturday, who wrote a lengthy post urging his followers to drop the matter.
“This is in the running for worst post ever made,” wrote the X user.
“Seriously,” Musk responded. “He said ‘Epstein’ half a dozen times while telling everyone to stop talking about Epstein.
“Just release the files as promised.”
According to reports, the deputy FBI director grew heated at Bondi during a Wednesday meeting in the Oval Office attended by White House chief of staff Susie Wiles this past week.
Bongino did not report to the FBI headquarters on Friday after the heated discussion with Bondi in the Oval Office, where the deputy director accused his superior of mismanaging the review of the investigation into Epstein, who died in 2019 in a Manhattan detention facility while awaiting prosecution on sex crimes, multiple outlets reported.
After being blamed internally for a minute of tape seemingly missing from a video released by the FBI of the area outside of Epstein’s cell on the night of his death, Bongino — who as a Fox News host fanned the flames of conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death in jail — and others were incensed by the ferocity of the blowback on the right.
That is now an open civil war among the MAGA crowd over the shuttering of the case. Administration officials, including Bongino, kicked off a firestorm with a declaration that Epstein’s death was a suicide, and that there was no evidence to support the existence of a list summarizing the disgraced pedophile’s accomplices.
“Bongino is out of control furious,” the person who has spoken with the deputy FBI director said. “This destroyed his career. He’s threatening to quit and torch Pam unless she’s fired.”
Bondi remains at the center of Bongino’s ire and general accusations of mismanagement of the Epstein review largely due to a comment she made on Fox News earlier this year.
During an interview, Bondi said that she had the client list “on her desk”. She responded to an interviewer’s question about the list being made public: “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”
But in recent days Bondi has explained that she was referring to the full investigation itself, not a “client list”, sitting on her desk. It’s an explanation that has satisfied few on the MAGA right, and a wide range of Trump-aligned influencers are calling on Bondi and others to resign or be fired. Trump himself has found himself accused of involvement, given his known friendship with Epstein before the latter’s criminal conviction.
The inner tension within the administration spurred the president’s post Saturday evening.
“What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!”
It also triggered one of the White House comms office’s typically angry statements.
“This work is being carried out seamlessly and with unity. Any attempt to sow division within this team is baseless and distracts from the real progress being made in restoring public safety and pursuing justice for all,” wrote spokesman Harrison Fields.
Musk fueled the fire once before earlier this summer, when he tweeted that Trump’s inclusion on the supposed client list was the reason it was not being released.
“Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files,” he tweeted in June. “That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”
That comment was largely ignored at the time, given reports of Musk’s alleged drug use and very public fallout with the president over the GOP budget reconciliation plan. With a habit for embracing utter falsehoods and nonsense, the onetime DOGE overlord’s tweet was dismissed by Trump’s allies. The bill eventually passed, despite Musk’s opposition. He would, after a few days, delete his initial accusation of the president.
The re-embrace of Epstein conspiracy-shopping by Musk is no surprise, given that the pendulum of MAGA popular opinion has suddenly shifted in his favor.
