Trump’s inner circle concerned Musk ‘getting too big for his breeches’
Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, publicly at least, are on good terms.
Yet when it comes to the staff in and around the new administration, it’s a different story. Just two-and-a-half weeks into Trump’s second term in office, a fissure has begun to emerge following Musk’s DOGE takeover of the US government, according to a half-dozen Trump loyalist Republican aides and advisers inside and around the administration who spoke with WIRED.
“I think it’s more the staff who have an issue with Elon than President Trump,” a Republican aide familiar with the discussions around DOGE and the administration tells WIRED. This staffer, like others, requested anonymity to relay sensitive conversations due to fears of retaliation.
In the space of a couple of weeks, Elon Musk and his associates have taken control of multiple government agencies, and a cadre of young and inexperienced engineers with ties to Musk have been given access to some of the most highly sensitive federal systems through DOGE. As Musk’s associates tore through the federal apparatus over the first weekend of February, a ride-or-die MAGA Republican operative who knows President Trump personally confided something to WIRED they never thought they’d find themselves saying before the past two weeks.
“There could be a collision course coming here at some point,” they said when asked if there’s a brewing freak-out over Musk in Trumpworld. “He’s getting too big for his breeches.”
The motivations of the people WIRED has spoken with cover a wide range. Some Trump campaign veterans hope White House chief of staff Susie Wiles will intervene, while other Republican operatives think the emerging rift is a problem despite having no personal animosity toward Musk. Others stand to gain personally or professionally from a Musk ouster. [Continue reading…]
The share of Republicans who say they want tech billionaire Elon Musk to have significant influence in the Trump administration has fallen substantially in the months since President Trump was elected.
In The Economist/YouGov poll taken in the days after the November 2024 election, 47 percent of surveyed Republicans said they wanted Musk to have “a lot” of influence in the Trump administration, while 29 percent wanted “a little” and 12 percent wanted him to have “none at all.”
Today, however, the share of Republicans who say they want Musk to have “a lot” of influence has fallen substantially to 26 percent. Meanwhile, 43 percent of Republican respondents say they want Musk to have “a little” influence, and 17 percent say they want him to have “none at all,” according to the latest poll from The Economist/YouGov released Wednesday. [Continue reading…]