Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s war has reached critical mass—and according to author Michael Wolff, Musk just dropped one of the biggest bombs yet.
Wolff appeared on an “emergency” episode of The Daily Beast Podcast with Joanna Coles on Thursday to discuss the jaw-dropping developments between the world’s richest man and America’s commander in chief. Following days of fiery barbs from Musk, Trump finally retaliated on Thursday, prompting an all-out escalation from his former pal.
In an afternoon post on X, Musk wrote that it was “Time to drop the really big bomb.” The billionaire claimed Trump “is in the Epstein files” and “that is the real reason they have not been made public.”
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“Have a nice day, DJT!” he added.
Wolff said the feud had “escalated into nuclear territory” on Thursday afternoon.
According to Wolff, the bestselling author behind multiple books chronicling Trump’s rise, Trump and the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein were the “best of friends” for 15 years. “They shared girlfriends, they shared airplanes, [and] business strategy,” he claimed.
Wolff claims he has seen damning evidence from those years that Trump would not want made public, including alleged lewd images of Trump and the sex offender, who died by suicide in a New York jail cell in 2019 ahead of his trial on sex trafficking charges.
“I have seen these pictures. I know that these pictures exist and I can describe them,” Wolff alleged. “There are about a dozen of them. The ones I specifically remember is the two of them with topless girls of an uncertain age sitting on Trump’s lap. And then Trump standing there with a stain on the front of his pants and three or four girls kind of bent over in laughter—they’re topless, too—pointing at Trump’s pants.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to The White House for comment.
In a Truth Social post shortly after Musk dropped his explosive Epstein claim, Trump wrote, “I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago.” He criticized Musk’s objections to his spending bill, but did not address the Epstein accusation.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded: “This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the ‘One, Big, Beautiful Bill’ because it does not include the policies he wanted.”
Wolff said he’s not certain what specifically Musk was referring to, but speculated that there may have been incriminating material, such as photos or documents, retrieved during an FBI raid of Epstein’s home in 2019.
“But I think in general, it could also be the Epstein file writ large,” Wolff commented. “The scope of the Jeffrey Epstein life intersects with the Donald Trump life in a very meaningful, in fact, profound way. These guys kind of made each other.”
After Trump’s inauguration, his administration vowed to disclose more documents related to the Epstein case. But when the first batch was shared with conservative influencers at the White House in February, it drew backlash for offering little beyond what was already public.
Trump was pictured with Epstein multiple times during the height of their association, and in 2002 told a magazine reporter he’s a “terrific guy” who is a “lot of fun to be with.”
“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump told New York magazine at the time.
The two reportedly had a falling out a couple of years later over a real estate dispute.
The president has distanced himself from Epstein in the decades since, saying he ended the relationship in the early 2000s and had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
In the days before the November election, the Daily Beast first published audio recordings by Wolff, which he says were made during a 2017 interview with Epstein.
Epstein described himself as Trump’s “closest friend for 10 years” and claimed the first time the president slept with his wife, Melania Trump, was on his plane. He also claimed the president was repeatedly unfaithful in his marriages.
At the time, the Trump camp denounced the tapes as “false smears” that amounted to “election interference.”
Wolff said he has up to 100 hours of recordings of interviews with Epstein, including after using him as a source for his 2018 book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.
Trump and Wolff have been publicly sparring this past week over a different matter, after Wolff claimed the president didn’t get in to Harvard. Trump denied it and called Wolff a “Third Rate Reporter” on Truth Social.
