Elon Musk says Donald Trump appears in files relating to the disgraced paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

It’s the latest in a string of barbs between the men as they appear to have dramatically fallen out in a public spat.

In a post on X, the tech billionaire said: “@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.

“Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.”

He gave no evidence for the claim. Sky News has approached the White House for comment.

Epstein killed himself in his jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking minors.

It comes after the president said he was “disappointed” with Musk after the entrepreneur publicly criticised Mr Trump‘s signature tax bill.

The president suggested his former backer and adviser missed being in government and has “Trump derangement syndrome”.

He added: “I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot.”

In a Truth Social post the US president said: “Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV 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!”.

On Tuesday, the world’s richest man called the president’s tax and spending bill “outrageous” and a “disgusting abomination” – days after abruptly leaving his position spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The bill, which includes multi-trillion-dollar tax breaks, was passed by the House Republicans in May and has been described by the president as a “big, beautiful bill”. By contrast, Musk has called it the “big, ugly bill”.

In another post on Thursday, Musk said: “The Trump tariffs will cause a recession in the second half of this year.”

He also asked whether it was “time to create a new political party in Amerca that actually represents the 80% in the middle”.

Musk also said his company SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft “immediately” following Mr Trump’s threats to cancel government contracts with Musk’s businesses.

Dragon is the only US spacecraft available to deliver crew to and from the International Space Station.

Shortly after the president expressed his disappointment in Musk on Thursday, the SpaceX boss responded.

“False”, he wrote on X.

“This bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!”

In another scathing post on X, Musk claimed responsibility for Donald Trump’s re-election success.

He wrote: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”

It came after Mr Trump told reporters the Tesla CEO was unimpressed electric vehicle incentives were being debated in the Senate and could face being cut.

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Last Thursday, Musk revealed on X that his scheduled time as a “special government employee” was coming to an end.

Before the news broke, Musk’s father told Sky News his son was “not a very good politician”.

But speaking to Gillian Joseph on The World, Errol Musk insisted there was “no rift between Elon and Donald Trump”.

Everyone at NATO knows about battles.

Sometimes you come out on top and sometimes you have to know when you’re beaten. And here, it’s the Americans who are wearing the biggest smiles.

It has long been a mantra of President Trump that European nations should spend a lot more money on defence.

During his first term in office, when he seemed to be deriding NATO on a regular basis, he amplified a debate that had long rumbled; now it feels like it’s coming to a resolution.

Certainly there was a bounce in the step of US defence secretary Pete Hegseth when we spoke.

“We all need increased capabilities and we all need to spend more,” he said.

“Thank you to President Trump for reviving this alliance. It was an alliance that was sleepwalking to irrelevance and President Trump, in his first term, said you need to step up and spend more. And he has in this term done the same.”

“What I saw in there”, gesturing to the meeting rooms where all the ministers had met, “were countries prepared to step up to push the limits of what they can do. That’s a good thing. That’s friends helping friends.”

Mr Hegseth came into this meeting in Brussels with one big demand – for NATO allies to bump up their defence spending to a total of 5% of GDP – more than any of them are spending at the moment.

Of that, he believes that at least 3.5% should be going towards core defence spending – soldiers, planes, guns and so on – while a further 1.5% could be spent on other “defence-related” elements – infrastructure, espionage, civil defence.

Pot one is clear. Pot two is vague – nobody seems quite sure what counts as “defence-related”. Climate change resilience, for instance, has been suggested by some countries. That one will need clearing up.

But even the 3.5% demand is a huge one.

Over third of worldwide defence spending by US

According to the latest data I’ve seen, only one NATO member presently spends above that target – and no, that isn’t America.

It’s Poland, which has ramped up military spending ever since neighbouring Ukraine was invaded. Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia have all done the same, nervously looking towards Russia.

The United States sits at 3.4% of GDP. But that’s 3.4% of a very big number, so it equates to an awful lot of spending.

To put that in context, more than a third of worldwide spending on defence is carried out by America.

Look at the top 10 nations in the world for defence spending, and America is top by a mile. It spends more than the other nine countries on that list put together.

What’s more, the vast majority of that money goes to American companies, and a great deal of it is shared among a relatively small number of those companies.

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Increased military spending may well be good for global security, but until such time as Europe expands its own defence industry, it’s also excellent news for the American economy.

Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary general, admitted that it was a huge challenge, but said that he would not accept countries simply kicking the financial can down the street.

Countries will be monitored constantly to ensure they are making annual progress towards the 5% target.

A finishing line hasn’t been established yet, but it’s probably going to be 10 years from now. Still, Rutte said he didn’t want “hockey sticks” – the statistical model where things stay flat for a long time, and the big rise only comes at the end.

Donald Trump has banned people from 12 countries entering the US, in a move he said protects against “foreign terrorists” and other security threats.

Some countries are subject to a full travel ban, while others are under a partial ban – with the order allowing countries to be removed or added from the list.

The proclamation is due to come into effect just after midnight on 9 June local time.

The ban echoes one in 2017 that Mr Trump implemented in his first term in the White House. This banned citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries – Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen – from travelling to the US.

Here is everything you need to know.

Which countries are affected?

The proclamation bans nationals from the following countries to travel to the US:

• Afghanistan
• Myanmar
• Chad
• Republic of the Congo
• Equatorial Guinea
• Eritrea
• Haiti
• Iran
• Libya
• Somalia
• Sudan
• Yemen.

The following seven countries are affected by a partial ban:

• Burundi
• Cuba
• Laos
• Sierra Leone
• Togo
• Turkmenistan
• Venezuela.

Both bans will affect foreign nationals from the designated countries who are outside the US on 9 June or do not have a valid visa.

Visas issued before 9 June when the law comes into force will remain valid, the proclamation states.

How many people come to the US from these countries?

From October 2023-September 2024 (the fiscal year), the US handed out more than 60,000 permanent visas to the 12 countries on the permanent ban list, according to data from the US Department of State.

The highest by far was to people from Afghanistan – 39,055 – with the most going to nationals who are employed by or on behalf of the US government and their immediate family members.

Under the new proclamation, Afghan nationals who hold special immigrant visas – people who worked most closely with the US government during the two-decade war there – are exempt from the ban.

The figures below do not include people who were given temporary visas.

Are there any exemptions?

Mr Trump said on Thursday that policy was a “key part of preventing major foreign terror attacks on American soil”.

His new list notably leaves out Syria, after Mr Trump met its leader recently on a trip to the Middle East.

Athletes competing in the 2026 World Cup, 2028 Olympics and other major sporting events will also be exempt.

The ban also does not apply to the following individuals:

• Diplomats travelling on valid non-immigration visas
• Immediate family members who hold immigrant visas
• People who have been adopted
• Afghan nationals holding special immigrant visas
• People who hold immigrant visas for ethnic and religious minorities facing “persecution in Iran”
• Dual nationals who have citizenship in countries not included in the travel ban

Why has the ban been introduced?

The proclamation states that America must ensure people entering don’t have “hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles” – and don’t support terror groups.

In a video posted to social media, Mr Trump said an attack in Colorado, in which eight were injured, had shown “the extreme dangers” of “foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come as temporary visitors and overstay their visas”.

The suspect in the attack is from Egypt, a country that is not on Mr Trump’s restricted list, but homeland security claimed he had overstayed a tourist visa.

The list was put together after the president asked homeland security officials and the director of national intelligence to compile a report on countries whose citizens could pose a threat.

The White House said some of the named countries had a “significant terrorist presence” and accused others of poor screening for dangerous individuals and not accepting deportees.

Critics, however, suggest the move is really designed to further cultivate hostility to immigrants in general, and that the president’s claim it is driven by security concerns is a lie.

What has the reaction been?

International aid groups and refugee resettlement organisations have condemned the new travel ban.

“This policy is not about national security – it is about sowing division and vilifying communities that are seeking safety and opportunity in the United States,” said Abby Maxman, president of Oxfam America.

The inclusion of Afghanistan has also angered some supporters, who have worked to resettle its people. Over a 12-month period to September 2024 there has been an estimated 14,000 arrivals from Afghanistan.

Mr Trump suspended refugee resettlement on his first day in office.

Shawn VanDiver, president and board chairman of the organisation #AfghanEvac, labelled the proclamation a “moral disgrace”.

“To include Afghanistan – a nation whose people stood alongside American service members for 20 years – is a moral disgrace,” he said.

“It spits in the face of our allies, our veterans, and every value we claim to uphold.”

Meanwhile, the Iranian government offered no immediate reaction to being included on the list.

What happened in 2017?

Mr Trump’s first travel restrictions in 2017 were criticised by opponents and human rights groups as a “Muslim ban”.

It led to some chaotic scenes, including tourists, students and business travellers prevented from boarding planes – or being held at US airports when they landed.

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Mr Trump denied it was Islamophobic, despite calling for a ban on Muslims entering America in his first presidential campaign.

The ban faced legal challenges and was modified until the Supreme Court upheld a third version in June 2018, calling it “squarely within the scope of presidential authority”.