Elon Musk knew exactly what he was doing when he posted a mic drop post on June 5, at the height of his public fallout with President Donald Trump.
“Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files,” Musk posted to X. “That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”
At the time, it was seen as a message that rendered the relationship between the president and his unlikely wingman irreparable. But Trump still seemed to hold all the cards. He was, after all, the most powerful man on the planet, even if he wasn’t the richest.
The Tesla billionaire was departing for an uncertain future, reviving the car giant he had single-handedly brought down to its knees.
But the clue to his true intention lay in his little-noticed follow-up post on his X platform.
“Mark this post for the future,” he wrote. “The truth will come out.”
Back then, Trump hadn’t objected to the release of the full Epstein files. He suggested he was open to it. He had nothing to hide. He had long distanced himself from the late financier and friend of the rich and famous. He wanted nothing to do with the man who was accused of sex trafficking minors before his death by suicide in a New York City prison cell on August 10, 2019.
“Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.” — Elon Musk pic.twitter.com/xyUTcxmCmz
— Pop Base (@PopBase) June 5, 2025
Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, misread the president in her desperation to suck up and handed out binders of details about Epstein. They were old and disappointing, but they came with the promise of more.
There were no alarm bells then. Certainly, nobody thought an aging scandal with a dead perp and a fading stink of wealth and entitlement could bring down the 47th president of the United States.
He had, after all, survived felony convictions and accusations of infidelity and malpractice from an adult movie actress, plus charges of stirring up a riot in America’s seat of democracy.
In the spiciness of the broken bromance, it was easy to forget that Musk and his acolytes had been delving deep into the government’s vaults. Who knows what secrets the Department of Government Efficiency mined in those explosive first few months?
Time has proved that Musk knew just how to hurt Trump.
And Trump knew right then that he had created his own personal Frankenstein‘s monster.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Department of Justice officials told Trump in May that his name appeared “multiple times” in the files.
This was before Musk’s X bombshell. It wasn’t a sign of wrongdoing, as many other names appeared in the documents. But alarm bells were ringing.
Weeks after Musk’s tweet, the Justice Department said no further information on Epstein would be released, in order to protect the victims of child pornography. Also: There was no list of Epstein’s “clients.” That was just another “fake story,” said the White House.
And that was supposed to be it.
By then, Musk had deleted his Epstein tweet. He even acknowledged he had “gone too far” in posting it.
But the genie was out of the bottle. And it was too big to stuff back in.
FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, had been banging on about the importance of releasing the files in their previous lives as podcasters. Now they were in charge of hiding them away.
Musk had left behind an unexploded bomb—and it just kept going off.
Seriously. He said “Epstein” half a dozen times while telling everyone to stop talking about Epstein.Just release the files as promised.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 13, 2025
To be sure the matter didn’t drop, Musk machine-gunned bursts of tweets, at one point sending 35 posts or reposts blasting Trump’s handling of the Epstein files.
He called it “a cover up (obviously)” and claimed “so many powerful people want that list suppressed.”
Musk also offered his own assessment of the Trump White House’s responses to the scandal.
“1. Admit nothing; 2. Deny everything; 3. Make counterclaims,” adding, ”But it won’t work this time.”
All the time, Trump has overseen a cover-up in plain sight. Backwards. At least, the administration is giving the impression it has finally decided to go through the motions it presumably should have done months ago. To the extent that on Thursday, Todd Blanche, the second in charge at the Attorney General’s office, flew to Tallahassee, Florida, to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s socialite friend, former girlfriend, and procurer-in-chief.
To Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison, it is an opportunity to negotiate a shorter sentence in return for sharing what she knows.
How the interview might help Trump is harder to assess. He knew Epstein. Maxwell knows that. Everybody knows that. But how well and for how long? These are dicier scenarios loaded with risk.
Why not just release all the papers mentioning Trump if there is nothing to hide? I guess that’s the billion-dollar question. Had he done that from the start, Epstein’s name would be consigned back into the bowels of hell where it belongs.
Trump is backtracking farther every day, from initially giving the impression the files would be released, to ensuring they would not. From saying he didn’t really care to suing The Wall Street Journal for a story about his alleged relationship.
It’s like a White House version of Memento, the 2000 Christopher Nolan movie that told its story in reverse.
Trump is paying the price for his open presidency. He talks for hours to the media without preparation. The danger in that is that his words can come back to haunt him. Every word he has ever spoken about Epstein and the Epstein files is being raked through with a fine-tooth comb.
Trump can handle his administration. He can probably handle his MAGA supporters, although there are worrying signs of a schism. He may even be able to handle the media.
But there is one man who still keeps him awake at night.
Because Donald Trump doesn’t know what Elon Musk knows or what he will do.
In Mary Shelley’s classic novel, scientist Victor Frankenstein follows the monster he created to the ends of the earth after vowing to destroy him.
But it is Victor who perishes first.
The monster hates his “father” for betraying him. “He had abandoned me: and, in the bitterness of my heart, I cursed him,” writes Shelley of the creature who disappears into the night hellbent on taking his own life.
Musk isn’t going anywhere. But he feels abandoned by Trump after helping to buy his presidency.
And Epstein is the weapon he is using to pay him back.
The post Opinion: How Musk Brought Epstein Back to Life to Win His Bitter War With Trump appeared first on The Daily Beast.
