Former adviser taunts president over links to Epstein while Trump threatens to cancel contracts for Musk companies

Elon Musk called for Donald Trump to be impeached after mocking his connections to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as the president threatened to cancel federal contracts and tax subsidies for Musk’s companies in an extraordinary social media feud on Thursday.

The deterioration of their once close relationship into bitter acrimony came over the course of several remarkable hours during which the president and the world’s richest man hurled deeply personal insults over matters significant and insignificant.

In the most churlish moment of the astonishing saga, Musk said on X the reason the Trump administration had not released the files into Epstein was because they implicated the president. He later quote-tweeted a post calling for Trump to be removed and said Trump’s tariffs would cause a recession.