Elon Musk is Already Driving White House Aides Nuts

Donald Trump’s staff is seriously pissed at Elon Musk after he called out the president’s newly announced artificial intelligence initiative for being broke.

On Tuesday, Trump announced Stargate, a public-private joint AI venture between the federal government, OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle. Trump claimed that the “monumental” undertaking could invest as much as $500 billion into tech over the next four years. OpenAI announced on X that it would deploy $100 billion “immediately.” Musk wasn’t quite as convinced.

“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote on X in response to OpenAI’s announcement. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”

Musk’s surprising move to undercut Trump’s announcement chafed allies of the president, according to Politico.

One Republican close to the White House told Politico that Trump’s staff was “furious” over Musk’s comments on Stargate. A White House official said that Musk has “very much” gotten ahead of himself.

One Trump ally went even further. “It’s clear he has abused the proximity to the president,” the Trump ally told Politico. “The problem is the president doesn’t have any leverage over him and Elon gives zero fucks.”

Trump has long appeared to have lost the reins over Musk. Last month, Trump was left trailing after Musk’s lead on his vehement opposition to a massive government spending bill put forward by Mike Johnson.

Like in that case, Musk disrupts things because he has his own ideas to pitch, and wants to use his own public forum to make them manifest in the melee: Musk noted that Microsoft’s Satya Nadella “definitely does have the money.”

It’s not clear that any amount of dissent will see Musk removed from Trump’s orbit. He’s reportedly been working in the White House all week, overseeing his vision of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

This isn’t the first time Musk has irritated people in Trump’s orbit. In November Trump insiders complained that the billionaire technocrat was acting like a “co-president,” “taking lots of credit for the president’s victory,” and giving his “opinion on and about everything.”

Less than a week into the new Donald Trump administration, Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” is already losing employees. 

The top lawyer in the pseudo-department, Bill McGinley, is leaving to work in the private sector, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. His departure follows Vivek Ramaswamy being pushed out of DOGE earlier this week for disagreeing with Musk over the department’s purpose. 

“I am in discussions regarding a number of private sector opportunities and will have something to announce in the next couple of weeks,” McGinley said Thursday. “I support President Trump, Vice President Vance, and the great teams in the White House and across the administration 100 percent.”  

McGinley, who served as Cabinet secretary in Trump’s first term, was initially Trump’s pick for White House counsel. But Trump later changed his mind and named McGinley as DOGE’s chief counsel in December, saying that the lawyer would assist in cutting regulations and reducing government spending. 

So far, DOGE is the target of three lawsuits alleging that its creation breaks federal law due to its operating like a federal agency yet not following public transparency laws that agencies are required to follow. Meanwhile, Musk already has a White House email address and has been working in the West Wing this week, the Journal reports, with DOGE based out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

With Ramaswamy’s and McGinley’s sudden departures, it seems that Musk’s vision for DOGE is clashing with others in Trump’s orbit as the group begins its work of slashing whatever Musk deems as waste in the federal government. With a deeply entrenched federal bureaucracy with allies in Congress, DOGE fights over prospective cuts are on the horizon, and more departures may soon follow.

Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were the only two Republicans who voted against Donald Trump’s choice to head the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, in a procedural vote Thursday, citing concerns with his ability to lead the U.S. military.

In a long post on X after the vote, Collins took note of the many pressures facing the military, including active conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, as well as threats in the Pacific. Hegseth “does not have the management experience and background that he will need in order to tackle these difficulties,” Collins’s statement said. 

Collins also said that she was concerned about Hegseth’s past statements questioning women serving in the military, saying that after she and Hegseth had a “candid conversation in December about his past statements and apparently evolving views,” she is “not convinced that his position on women serving in combat roles has changed.”

Like Collins, Murkowski also announced her decision to oppose Hegseth in an X post. The Alaska senator said she was concerned about Hegseth’s inexperience, as well as his previous statements against women serving in the military. Murkowski also cited the allegations against Hegseth of sexual assault and excessive drinking in her decision, as well as his repeated marital infidelity.

“These behaviors starkly contrast the values and discipline expected of servicemembers. Men and women in uniform are held accountable for such actions, and they deserve leaders who uphold these same standards,” Murkowski’s statement read.  

In recent days, more allegations against Hegseth have surfaced as his former sister-in-law said in a sworn affidavit that he made his second wife fear for her safety with his “volatile and threatening conduct” and that he doesn’t think women deserve the right to vote.

Murkowski’s and Collins’s votes against Hegseth Thursday led to his nomination only advancing by a 51–49 vote, with every Democrat voting against the former Fox News personality. A final vote on Hegseth’s nomination is expected later this week, and if he loses just one more Republican vote, his confirmation would need Vice President JD Vance’s tiebreaker. Either way, it would be the narrowest confirmation of Trump’s Cabinet nominees so far.

Donald Trump has revoked the security detail for Mike Pompeo, despite the fact that the former secretary of state is reportedly facing threats for actions he took under the president’s direction.

Pompeo and former aide Brian Hook both lost their security details Tuesday, The New York Times reported, despite warnings from the Biden administration that both men had received threats from Iran.

Pompeo and Hook had been involved in America’s aggressive stance toward Iran during the first Trump administration, and Pompeo was reportedly a driving force behind convincing Trump to have Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, killed.

This change, which the Times reported Thursday, came one day after Trump decided to revoke the security detail of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser. Bolton has been an outspoken critic of the president.

When Bolton’s security detail was removed, it seemed like a petty jab at someone on Trump’s list of political enemies (it’s really Kash Patel’s list), which could potentially have dangerous consequences. Bolton has also received death threats from Iran and was the target of a murder plot by a member of the Revolutionary Guards Corps in 2022.

Pompeo has done a few small things that could have incurred Trump’s wrath. During his first administration, Pompeo once undermined Trump’s claim that Iran wasn’t funding terrorist groups while Trump was president. In 2023, Pompeo warned that the GOP should shift away from “celebrity leaders” with “fragile egos.” He also was honest about the administration’s financial failures, saying that “the Trump administration spent $6 trillion more than it took in, adding to the deficit,” a truth Trump would rather ignore as he begins his second term.

Trump previously said that Pompeo would not have a place in his forthcoming administration, and said he doesn’t want anyone who worked under Pompeo to join his administration either.

Biden administration officials had stressed to members of the Trump administration the need for security details for all three men, someone with knowledge of the matter told the Times.

The rampant, vile horniness of Republican lawmakers may stop them from getting a key witness on the stand in their sham “reinvestigation” of the January 6 insurrection. 

One of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s aides warned Republicans not to subpoena former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson  because doing so would likely reveal all of the sexually explicit text messages Republicans have been sending Hutchinson since 2018, according to The Washington Post. 

Hutchinson is known for delivering an explosive testimony about the events of January 6, 2021, exposing President Trump as the power-crazed man he is. She told Congress that Trump grabbed the wheel of a moving limousine, jumped at a Secret Service agent, and threw a plate of food at the wall in the days leading up to January 6. 

The idea to subpoena Hutchinson was first raised by Representative Barry Loudermilk, who led the first Republican-only investigation into January 6. He was seeking testimony and electronic messages from Hutchinson in regard to her communications with former Representative Liz Cheney, the Republican leader of the House select committee investigating January 6.

But Loudermilk was dissuaded from this by the Johnson aide, who stated that such a subpoena could add “sexual texts from members who were trying to engage in sexual favors” to public record and “potentially reveal embarrassing information.”

One can only speculate the horrors Hutchinson was sent by our own public officials.