A printed piece of paper was all it took to shift the mood inside the Oval Office last summer, according to Sen. Ted Cruz, who says he sat feet away from President Donald Trump the moment Elon Musk’s Epstein files claim reached him. This revelation comes after Musk and Trump have supposedly patched up.
Ted Cruz reveals how Donald Trump reacted to Elon Musk’s Epstein files tweet
Speaking on Patrick Bet-David’s “PBD Podcast” this week, Cruz revisited a June 2025 sit-down that was supposed to focus entirely on school choice policy. Instead, the senator says the meeting took an abrupt turn once Musk’s post about Donald Trump and the Epstein files began circulating online.
Cruz noted that Trump largely relies on staff to flag anything urgent on social media rather than checking his phone himself. “So Trump, now, he’s not on his phone anymore nearly as much,” Cruz said, “so what happens when something gets tweeted is they print it out.”
That’s exactly what happened, per Cruz’s account. Aide Natalie Harp entered the room with a hard copy of the tweet in hand. Cruz described the exchange as: “Comes in, prints it on a piece of paper and hands it to him, and he literally reads that tweet, and I’m sitting in the Oval, and his knuckles turn white.”
Ted Cruz said the shift in Donald Trump’s demeanor was immediate, though he didn’t understand the cause until he read the page himself afterward. Bet-David pressed him on the timing, asking if the reaction was instantaneous. Senator quipped: “They hand it to him that second. … And he was so pissed. I joked I learned some curse words I didn’t even know.” According to him, the school choice discussion effectively ended there, replaced by what he called Trump’s “technicolor views” on Musk.
The tweet in question accused officials of sitting on Jeffrey Epstein-related records specifically because those files implicated Trump. That claim surfaced during a public falling-out between Musk and Trump following Musk’s exit from the Department of Government Efficiency. Elon Musk later removed the post from X, and the two have since mended their relationship.
