CNN’s Jake Tapper reports the timeline of the rollercoaster posting dispute between President Trump and Elon Musk that took place Thursday afternoon:

JAKE TAPPER: Just in the last few hours, the relationship between President Donald J. Trump and billionaire Elon Musk has so rapidly disintegrated that Musk, without evidence, is now accusing President Trump of being in the as-yet-unreleased or as-yet-released Epstein files. Musk tweeted this afternoon, quote: Time to drop the really big bomb. Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT.” This claim, which CNN cannot confirm, of course, would imply that Trump was in some way name-dropped in the case surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious and convicted pedophile who died by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting his federal sex trafficking trial. The accusation from Musk is about as nasty as it gets, accusing somebody of being a pedophile and then covering it up. Mr. Musk did not detail how he would know what was or what was not inside any unreleased filings related to Epstein, assuming there are unreleased files related to Epstein. CNN has reached out to the White House for a response. We have not got one yet. Musk also knows that for years, conservatives and right-wing figures have suggested that the U.S. government is hiding secrets, bipartisan secrets, Democrats and Republicans, relating to Jeffrey Epstein. These supporters of Mr. Trump have long been clamoring for the government to release more of the files. Trump, who was friends with Epstein decades ago, talked on the campaign trail about potentially releasing more files on Epstein. We need to back up for a moment, though, and explain how we got to this particular friendship graveyard, given that just six days ago when Elon Musk left his role as an advisor to the president and head of the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, President Trump gave Musk the key to the White House, the ceremonial golden key. Mr. Trump may now be changing the locks, as this feud today essentially escalated publicly in real time. In the Oval Office with the German Chancellor this morning, a reporter asked President Trump about Musk recently criticizing, viciously criticizing, the so-called “One Big, Beautiful” bill. Elon had been calling on Congress to, quote, kill the bill, saying it adds too much to the deficit. So here’s what President Trump first said today about Elon’s bill-bashing just before noon Eastern time: PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’ve always liked Elon, and it’s always very surprised. I’d rather have him criticize me than the bill because the bill is incredible. JAKE TAPPER: So the president went on to talk about other subjects, and you know, be careful what you ask for when he says I’d rather have him criticize me than the bill. The president went on to talk about other subjects, eventually doing the weave — the proverbial weave — back to the subject of Elon Musk. So this was at around 12.06 p.m. Eastern. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: 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. 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. JAKE TAPPER: The EV mandate, the electric vehicle mandate, obviously, Mr. Musk owns Tesla, which is a premier electric vehicle company. But it turns out Mr. Musk, Elon Musk, was watching that, and he didn’t let that one go unanswered. Thirteen minutes after President Trump said that, Musk posted, quote: “Whatever, keep the EV solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil and gas subsidies are touched, very unfair, but ditch the mountain of disgusting pork in the bill. In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this. Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill. Slim and beautiful is the way.” As President Trump continued taking questions at the White House, Elon Musk reposted at 12.25 p.m. the very clip where Trump says Musk only had a problem with the bill after he found out about cutting the electric vehicle mandates. Musk writes, quote: “False. This bill was never shown to me once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it.” Shortly after that, 12.46 p.m. Eastern, is when a doctor might have officially called the time of death on the Trump-Musk relationship. Call it. Musk posted on his ex-platform, quote: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election. Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude.” Hitting Trump where it hurts, in the electoral college there. And the rage posting, Musk even tagged Donald Trump, saying, remember this? Showing a video of when Musk essentially turned the White House South Lawn into a car dealership and he gave Trump a Tesla, that red Tesla, which is still, according to our White House correspondent, Kristen Holmes, still parked in the White House parking lot. The gloves were off. 12.37 p.m. Eastern, President Trump takes to his own platform, Truth Social, not X, not Twitter, saying, quote: “Elon was wearing thin. I asked him to leave. I took away his electric vehicle mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted, that he knew for months I was going to do. And he just went crazy.” And within the same minute, Trump fired off another post, saying, quote: “The easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it.” Oof. That blow, of course, hitting Elon where it hurts, in his wallet, especially given the Tesla plummeted down 14.3 percent as this battle heated up. The selloff wiped about $ 150 billion off the market value of Tesla. And then about 30 minutes later, there it was, Musk dropping that major unfounded accusation about Trump being in the Epstein files. The insults are still flying back and forth, Elon posting on X, quote: “The Trump tariffs will cause a recession in the second half of this year.” I mean, lots going on. And I don’t even know what’s happened in the last seven minutes since I’ve been talking to you.

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