US politics live: Donald Trump is reportedly selling his Tesla after feud with Elon Musk explodes

Donald Trump’s nuclear-level spat with Elon Musk is continuing with the President refusing to speak to his former pal and telling reporters he’s ‘lost his mind’.

Welcome, once more, to our live coverage of US politics. It has already been an eventful day.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s partnership, turned conscious uncoupling, turned falling out has now evolved into a full-blown public feud.

The pair have spent today trading barbs, and sometimes even threats.

“Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, adding that he was “very disappointed” in Mr Musk.

The Tesla and SpaceX boss hit back on social media, accusing Mr Trump of showing “ingratitude” for his help beating Kamala Harris last year.

Mr Musk donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the campaign, and his control of the social media platform Twitter was also a factor.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Mr Musk claimed.

As the back-and-forth escalated, Mr Trump threatened to scrap the federal government contracts and subsidies that have benefited Mr Musk’s companies.

“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!” the President said on his own social media platform, Truth Social.

“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!”

Mr Musk retaliated by saying he would decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, which was recently used to bring home four astronauts stranded on the International Space Station.

“In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately,” he said.

(He later backflipped on this at the urging of a random Twitter user.)

Then Mr Musk told his followers it was “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!” he tweeted.

Many documents related to Jeffrey Epstein’s years of sex trafficking have not been released to the public, and those we can read remain heavily redacted.

While there are conspiracy theorists who believe the government is sitting on a list of Epstein’s clients, no evidence has ever emerged publicly to suggest such a list exists.

Anyway, the drama continues. Read on for the latest updates.

Originally published as US politics live: Donald Trump is reportedly selling his Tesla after feud with Elon Musk explodes