~18 hours with recommended fee's, still no confirmation :(

[alani123]

The double spend[1] is confirmed. You may want to use the fee estimate by core and make sure its ready to avoid these issues in the future. It shows a small text warning when its not ready, in this case wait a few more blocks.

[1] https://blockchain.info/tx/e2ffaf2034f8124904ef9441d32b8ded98dc7b56cff732208a1aa9e35d45a612

Thanks
Will the original two transactions be removed from the mempool and the double spend message be removed?

If they are not removed and showing as "conflicted" you need to remove them with -zapwallettxes. From what I read above you did this already though

Nevermind I just understood that you are talking about the message on e.g. blockchain.info. Yes, this message will only be shown for some time and be gone after that. I dont know the exact time, but not longer than a few days.

Already removed. Quote from the linked transactions in blockchain.info

Transaction rejected by our node. Reason: Transaction was previously accepted but has been pruned from our database.