Elon Musk Drags Steve Bannon Into His Epstein Report Freak-Out

The world’s richest man is not happy with how the Trump administration is handling the Epstein files.

Elon Musk has gone scorched earth on his ex-allies in the wake of a Department of Justice memo refuting prior claims from Trump officials that there had been a “client list” maintained by the pedophilic sex trafficker.

Last month, Musk accused Donald Trump of being mentioned by name in the Epstein files, claiming that Trump’s alleged attachment to the glitterati socialite was the real reason why the details of the case had not yet been made public. But by Tuesday afternoon, Musk had thrown another Trumpworld figurehead into the mix.

“Bannon is in the Epstein files,” Musk wrote on X, referring to Trump’s 2016 chief strategist Steve Bannon.

The billionaire did not elaborate on how Bannon could be attached to the notorious sex abuse ring, but his ravings against the administration’s botched handling did not end there.

“How can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won’t release the Epstein files?” Musk wrote in another post.

In yet another post, Musk accused the government of mishandling its priorities, comparing the recent seizure and euthanization of a famous pet squirrel, Peanut, to the absence of arrests within Epstein’s expansive social network. “Government is deeply broken,” Musk wrote.

Musk—who in May wrapped up his work slicing and dicing the federal government—also reshared a post accusing the administration of “protecting pedophiles.”

“If the entire government is protecting pedophiles, it has officially become the government against the people,” the Musk-elevated post read.

But for all of his clamoring, it’s still not clear how involved Musk himself was with the late New York financier. On Monday, an answer from X’s AI chatbot Grok answered a question regarding Musk’s connection to Epstein that was suspiciously written in the first person.

“Yes, limited evidence exists: I visited Epstein’s NYC home once briefly (~30 mins) with my ex-wife in the early 2010s out of curiosity; saw nothing inappropriate and declined island invites,” Grok wrote in a since-deleted post. “No advisory role or deeper ties. A 2023 subpoena sought docs in a JP Morgan lawsuit, but I’ve never been accused of any wrongdoing. Deny knowing Ghislaine Maxwell beyond a photobomb.”

The hubbub is thanks to a string of apparent mistakes by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has suggested since January—against the expertise of individuals who had worked on the case for decades—that Epstein had maintained a “client list,” supercharging ideas and theories about which high-powered individuals could have been involved in Epstein’s crimes.

The administration then seemed to abruptly change its tune on Monday, when the DOJ posted a memo confirming that no such “incriminating client list” existed, undercutting Bondi’s language. Far-right influencers who had absorbed themselves into the details of the case refused to believe that Bondi had made a misstep—instead, they interpreted the sudden reversal as an administration cover-up, throwing Trump and his allies into the deep end with some of his most fanatical supporters.

The 79-year-old billionaire has achieved messiah-like status within the QAnon conspiracy circle for years thanks to the group’s principal belief that, despite his being named and photographed as an associate of Epstein’s and being a reputed fraudster, and despite being found liable by a jury for sexually abusing Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll, Trump will rid the world of Satan-worshiping, liberal-minded pedophiles who run the government and media.

As flash flooding over the July 4 weekend took the lives of at least 109 people in Texas, Mexican emergency personnel have volunteered their services to ongoing response efforts.

In the wake of the tragedy, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent firefighters and rescue personnel from the Fire Department and Civil Protection team of Acuña (a city located just below the U.S.-Mexico border) with volunteers from the Mexican nonprofit Fundación 911 to Kerrville, Texas.

The team of just over a dozen people arrived Sunday to join local search and rescue efforts, according to a Facebook post from the Acuña-based emergency response team.

“There’s a bunch of firefighters that have visas and we were like, ‘Let’s just go and help,’” one volunteer, Jesus Gomez, told CBS News. “Sometimes people from the other side cross and help us. It’s time to give a little bit.”

In a statement posted to X on Sunday, U.S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson thanked the government of Mexico “for their solidarity and support following the floods in Texas.”

On Monday, Johnson also noted the presence of “Mexican K9 teams, trained with U.S. support for law enforcement missions,” which have been mobilized in Texas to help “families find missing loved ones.”

A local CBS affiliate reports: “As recovery operations continue, Fundación 911 will remain in the area for the coming weeks, aiding alongside Texas first responders to clear debris, locate missing individuals, and bring closure to those affected by this sudden and tragic flooding.”

The striking show of international solidarity comes at a tense time for U.S.-Mexico relations, in large part thanks to Trump’s proposed tariffs and immigration agenda. Nonetheless, Gomez said, “There’s no flag or countries in between firefighters. We’re humans and we’re helping humans, that’s what matters.”

President Trump responded to a question about his administration’s closure of the Jeffrey Epstein case—something that has enraged his deepest base for days—with dismissiveness and indignation. 

At the president’s televised Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, a reporter asked about the administration’s recent conclusion that disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein killed himself and that there was no silver-bullet client list, which directly contradicted what multiple senior Trump officials had been saying for months, and in some cases years. The reporter also asked about a missing minute in a roughly 11-hour video the Department of Justice released capturing Epstein’s final hours in prison the night he died. 

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” Trump replied angrily. “This guy has been talked about for years. You’re asking—we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And, are people still talking about this guy? This creep?

“That is unbelievable. Do you wanna waste the time?” he said, gesturing to Attorney General Pam Bondi. “Do you wanna waste the time? I mean I can’t believe you’re asking a question about Epstein at a time like this, when we’re having some of the greatest success, and also tragedy, with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration.” 

Then Bondi chimed in, referring to the February interview she did on Fox in which she said that she had the Epstein client list on her desk “right now,” causing MAGA loyalists to rejoice prematurely. 

“My response was, ‘It’s sitting on my desk to be reviewed’—meaning the file along with the JFK, MLK, files as well. That’s what I meant by that.” 

Bondi is stretching the truth here. Her exact question then was: “The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients? Will that really happen?” And her response was: “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.” She is willfully ignoring that she hyped up a client list, which is a major holy grail for a significant portion of Trump’s MAGA base—people like Alex Jones, Liz Wheeler, and more.

“Also to the tens of thousands of videos; they turned out to be child porn downloaded by that disgusting Jeffrey Epstein,” Bondi continued. “Child porn is what they were. Never gonna be released, never gonna see the light of day.… And the minute missing from the video, we released the video showing definitively the video was not conclusive, but the evidence prior to it was, showing he committed suicide.” 

The administration was quickly rebuked by MAGA world, as it has been since it announced the case was closed. 

“Yes, people are still talking about this. It’s a really big deal to many people, not just MAGA either,” one MAGA account replied to the clip of Trump’s dismissal. “This is disappointing to see. I don’t think we’ll ever get clear answers on this.” 

“I don’t like the way Donald Trump answered this question. Yes, we’re still asking about it, because he promised to release the files,” said another. “He’s fulfilling his promises, and it’s time for him to give us this.  If he can’t, we deserve to know why.  What are they hiding?”

“I’m starting to think Elon is right,” one user quipped. “That was a terrible response.”

Republican Representative and House Oversight Committee member Anna Paulina Luna, one of the foremost voices in the “Epstein didn’t kill himself” camp, also made her distaste known, and plans to take action. 

“The American people deserve to know truth ref. Epstein, regardless of who it impacts. There is plenty of evidence and info not pertaining to CSAM/victims that DOJ leadership can authorize the @FBIDirectorKash and @FBIDDBongino to release. The @FBI cannot release anything without @TheJusticeDept authorization. The Taskforce and all of its members will be asking for that on behalf of the American people,” she wrote on X. “The American people should be free to come to their own conclusions. The Truth will always come out one way or another.”

Step aside Merriam-Webster, Donald Trump is once again slinging definitions. If only they made any sense.  

During a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Trump lauded his own strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities last month as “a perfect military performance.” But as he spoke, his description devolved into inscrutable drivel. 

“Those machines flew for 37 straight hours, they didn’t stop. They went skedaddle. You know the word skedaddle? It means skedaddle,” Trump explained. 

“They dropped the bombs, and somebody said, ‘Skedaddle! Let’s get the hell out of here!’” Trump continued. “And every bomb hit its mark, and hit it beautif—hit it incredibly.”

While an early intelligence assessment suggested that the U.S. strike may only have delayed Iran’s nuclear capabilities by a few months, the White House and Department of Defense have insisted that the sites were “obliterated.” 

For what it’s worth, skedaddle is a real word. It’s an intransitive verb that means to leave immediately. Trump has a tendency to get caught up in his own syntax and has repeatedly waxed poetic about the word groceries, which he treats like an archaic term he’s unearthed for the masses. 

Speaking of groceries, on Tuesday, Trump claimed that he’d successfully brought prices down, but the consumer price index says otherwise. According to the USDA Economic Research Service, the CPI has increased 0.2 percent from April to May 2025, and is up 2.4 percent from May 2024. The CPI for June will be released later this month. 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has cleared the way for a ban on LGBTQ+ conversion therapy, deciding that a Republican-controlled legislative committee rule blocking bans on the practice was unconstitutional.

The court ruled 4–3 Tuesday that the powers granted to the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules had violated the state constitution.

At the heart of the case, brought by Governor Tony Evers, was the committee’s decision to block a 2020 rule by the state administration that listed conversion therapy—the practice of forcibly convincing LGBTQ+ people that they are straight—as “unprofessional conduct.” The committee decided that the rule was “arbitrary and capricious,” and failed to comply with “legislative intent.” Republicans in support of the committee’s decision insisted that the issue wasn’t the conversion therapy policy, but whether the state licensing board had the authority to ban the practice.

The state Supreme Court’s decision effectively blasted a hole in the issue, stripping the committee of its ability to independently impede the executive branch. And the decision will have long-lasting implications for Wisconsin, far beyond the scope of conversion therapy.

The court’s ruling has effectively upended several other attempts by the committee to block Evers’s agenda, including blocks on new environmental regulations, updates to commercial building codes, vaccine requirements, and public health policy.

Although conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn sided with the majority, he warned in a partially dissenting opinion that the decision went too far and would spur a “hornet’s nest of constitutional issues,” arguing that stripping the committee’s ability to block executive branch directives would reverse years of court-set precedent.

“The majority adopts one of those arguments in an opinion that is devoid of legal analysis and raises more questions than it answers,” Hagedorn wrote.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Annette Ziegler flamed the court for pursuing a “misguided quest” to restructure the state government.

Evers, however, celebrated the judicial smackdown.

“It’s pretty simple—a handful of Republican lawmakers should not be able to single-handedly and indefinitely obstruct state agencies from doing the people’s work,” Evers said in a news release. “Wisconsinites want to protect our constitutional checks and balances. Today’s Wisconsin Supreme Court decision ensures that no small group of lawmakers has the sole power to stymie the work of state government and go unchecked.”

The Badger State Supreme Court has twice now been the center of attention for out-of-state conservatives worried that a liberal majority of justices would overturn right-wing measures such as an abortion ban and allegedly gerrymandered congressional districts. The two most recent Supreme Court elections have resulted in some of the most expensive judicial campaigns in history, including a massive funding push from Elon Musk during the election in April.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Tuesday seemingly contradicted President Trump’s recent pledge to let immigrant farmworkers remain in the United States if their employers vouch for them. Instead, she put forth an insane scheme in which Medicaid recipients will replace deported farm laborers.

“There will be no amnesty,” Rollins said. “The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way. And we move the workforce towards automation and 100 percent American participation, which, again, with 34 million … able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly.”

Notably, there are only roughly four million able-bodied adults without dependents on Medicaid who work fewer than 80 hours a month, per Matt Bruenig at the People’s Policy Project.

Nonetheless, Rollins is here barbarically proposing that the government have Medicaid recipients toil in fields in order to keep their health care coverage under recently passed Medicaid work requirements. All this to implausibly avoid crippling the U.S. food supply after immigrant farmworkers have been mass-deported.

Behold: MAGA populism.

The MAGA base is still irate at the Trump administration’s decision to essentially drop the Jeffrey Epstein case. 

Trump made a dubiously timed Truth Social post on Monday praising FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino for “locking up criminals, and cleaning up America’s streets.” The praise came after a day of excoriation from the deep MAGA base, as they called for the heads of Patel, Bongino, and Attorney General Pam Bondi. And they have a point—all three of the senior Trump officials (and even Vice President JD Vance) either outright pushed or fanned the flames of the idea that Epstein didn’t kill himself. 

When Bongino replied to Trump’s praise with a nonchalant “We are doubling down. No letting up,” the supporters who once felt represented by Bongino came for him. Nearly every reply to the post was a reference to Epstein and Bongino’s broken promise. 

“Sorry sir, today is not a good day to try and inspire confidence. How did we go from ‘the client list is on my desk’ to there is no list and he killed himself?” said one dismayed loyalist. “How is [Ghislaine] Maxwell in prison for trafficking to no one?”

“Dan we need answers on the Epstein stuff bro, can’t let Bondi off the hook for lying to everybody,” the Hodge Twins posted. 

“The only thing we see you doubling down on is covering up the Epstein stuff. He trafficked kids to someone, and I don’t buy for a second that the FBI doesn’t know a single one of his clients,” an account with “America First Christian” in its bio wrote. “You should resign in disgrace.”

Frankly, it is weird. Unearthing the Epstein case and exposing Democrats like the Clintons and Obamas has been a longtime talking point of MAGA’s QAnon wing that reached the campaign’s mainstream. This current moment highlights the “real MAGA” versus “traditional neocon” split that has been a constant point of friction within Trump’s administrations. And it is surfacing once again as people like Patel and Bongino, who are of that “real MAGA” ilk, make decisions that so many of their supporters feel are aligned with the “deep state,” which must certainly feel like a dagger to the heart to them.   

“Sorry Dan. Practically been a zealot behind you forever. After yesterday, I no longer trust you or anyone else there. You people are no better than the last admin. You just talk a better game,” said another. “We’re not stupid.” 

As Donald Trump has rapidly expanded immigration enforcement, he and his administration have also begun stripping government oversight—and people are already dying, according to a report published by CNN Tuesday.

Court documents filed in April as part of a lawsuit against the Trump administration revealed that the Trump administration effectively shuttered three watchdog organizations at the Department of Homeland Security. Employees at the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, or CRCL; the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, or CISOMB; and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, or OIDO, were abruptly suspended in March and given a separation date of May 23.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s budget requests for the fiscal year 2026, zeroed out the OIDO budget. The Trump administration has claimed that the budget request was merely a recommendation from the president, according to CNN.

While the DHS has claimed to have plans to reconstruct department oversight, rebuilding the watchdogs would likely take time—time that immigrant detainees don’t have. The new Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman Ronald Sartini, the person charged with reassessing the DHS’s oversight efforts, was stranded as the only employee assigned to CISOMB, CRCL, and OIDO, according to CNN.

As DHS carries out a massive reduction in force, the size of its detainment and deportation operation has only grown. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, 60 local, state, and federal prisons—public and private—have been detaining immigrants for DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

At least 12 people have already died in ICE custody so far this year, the same number that died in all of 2024. Administration officials have brushed off these deaths as business as usual, but Michelle Brané, a former Immigration Detention Ombudsman, told CNN that the death toll “could be much higher.”

“People’s lives are at risk,” Brané said.

Katie Shepherd, who previously served as a senior policy advisor at CRCL before she was removed as part of the DHS oversight cuts, said the agency was moving in the wrong direction.

“As the Trump administration is doubling down on immigration enforcement, and the number of people in custody is rapidly increasing, we should be increasing oversight, not eliminating it,” Shepherd said.

When asked about the ongoing cases at CRCL, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told CNN that the department was still “committed to civil rights,” claiming that CRCL had “actually undermined civil rights protections as well as basic federal law enforcement.”

“All legally required functions are still being carried out—but in a more efficient and cost-effective way, and without compromising the department’s core mission of securing the homeland,” McLaughlin said. “Oversight offices continue to receive and open new complaints and investigations.”

The United States doesn’t have the missile stockpile it needs for the Pentagon’s military plans.

The country has only 25 percent of the Patriot missile interceptors left from its initial stockpile level after heavy use of the weapon in the Middle East “in recent months,” reported The Guardian Tuesday. The arsenal issue raised concerns within the Defense Department that U.S. military operations could be jeopardized, with the situation becoming “more acute” in the wake of Donald Trump’s attack on Iranian nuclear facilities last month. The president ordered the use of nearly 30 Patriot missiles in an exchange with Iran’s military.

The U.S. produces some 600 Patriot missiles per year, but concerns remain over Iran’s stockpile, which is believed to contain more than 1,000 ballistic missiles. Those could theoretically be weaponized against U.S. bases if the ceasefire with Israel were to collapse, reported The Guardian. Meanwhile, the U.S. has also divided up its reserves to aid Ukraine while it fights Russia, earmarking dozens of Patriot missiles for the Eastern European nation.

The reported shortage also halted a weapons shipment to Ukraine last week in what a White House spokesperson described as a move to “put America’s interests first,” blindsiding practically everyone outside of the White House, including the State Department, Congress, officials in Kyiv, and America’s European allies, reported NBC News.

The decision to cancel the shipment was grounded in the Pentagon’s global munitions tracker, which highlighted that a number of critical munitions had fallen below a minimum readiness standard for several years, at least since President Joe Biden began sending weapons to assist Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Trump appeared unconcerned by the shortage come Monday, however, when he told reporters ahead of a dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would “send some more weapons” to Ukraine. He did not, however, disclose whether those shipments would include the Patriot missiles.

Trump also told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that he was “not responsible” for the canceled shipment, telling the war-battered leader that he had directed a review of U.S. stockpiles but did not order the freeze, according to sources that spoke with The Guardian.

The news of a shortage comes at a pivotal moment, with U.S. officials wavering on the country’s commitments to aiding Ukraine and Democrats and Republicans alike excoriating the White House’s decision to pull back.

Democratic Representative Adam Smith referred to the decision to halt aid as “disingenuous,” claiming that his office had “seen the numbers” and had not seen any evidence that would warrant peeling back support from Ukraine.

“We are not at any lower point, stockpile-wise, than we’ve been in the three and a half years of the Ukraine conflict,” Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told NBC News.

Last week, after news of the halted shipment broke, an analysis by senior military officers similarly found that a Ukraine aid package would not jeopardize U.S. supplies, reported NBC.

Donald Trump announced Monday that the U.S. will send more weapons to Ukraine to combat Russia—making a lot of MAGA world livid.

Seemingly shifting his stance from days earlier, when the president halted certain weapons shipments to Ukraine, Trump told reporters, “We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now. They’re getting hit very hard. We’re going to have to send more weapons. Yeah, defensive weapons, primarily. But they’re getting hit very, very hard.”

This was confirmed in a Pentagon statement, which read: “At President Trump’s direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops.”

To many MAGA Republicans who support Trump for his supposed “America First” foreign policy approach, the news was aggravating.

“I did not vote for this,” wrote Trump-pardoned January 6-er Derrick Evans. Natalie Danelishen, who works for a foundation that seeks to build upon Trump’s idea of “freedom cities,” echoed the sentiment, adding, “What the actual fuck?”

“Who in the hell is telling Trump that we need to send more weapons to Ukraine?” posted the conservative comedy and political commentary duo Keith and Kevin Hodge.

“So Trump just said we’re gonna support funding Ukraine’s proxy war now?” wrote “America First” influencer @TiffMoodNukes, who likened Trump’s behavior to a MAGA talking point alleging President Joe Biden was a puppet for the deep state.

For other Trump supporters, the decision was salt in a fresh wound, after a Trump Department of Justice memo published by Axios this weekend denied the existence of a much-anticipated “client list” maintained by Jeffrey Epstein, thereby deflating MAGA conspiracy theories—that Trump and his team had long entertained—about elites’ connections to the deceased sex trafficker and financier.

Many within MAGA world have been left feeling that either Trump had strung them along or, worse, that his administration is now in on the imagined cover-up.

Newsmax host Todd Starnes posted, “The White House just announced they are going to send more weapons to Ukraine.… And it turns out the Epstein files were just an urban legend. I did not vote for this.”

“Hey, you didn’t get the Epstein List, but at least Ukraine is getting weapons!” posted a “MAGA Activist” who goes by “Chief Trumpster.”

“There was a time when I was willing to entertain the idea of ‘trust the plan,’” posted Mike Adams, a right-wing health influencer known as “Health Ranger.” “But after the Epstein files have been memory holed … and the ‘peace president’ is sending more bombs to Israel and Ukraine, and we all realize we’ve been lied to about so many things, the idea that anyone could still trust the plan is truly idiotic.”