Trump's populist platform gives way to billionaires' agenda
Inside President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, the populists and politicians are starting to take swings at the plutocrats — namely billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk.
Inside President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, the populists and politicians are starting to take swings at the plutocrats — namely billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk.
In a tense Cabinet meeting Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy excoriated Musk for firing their employees without giving consideration to whether letting them go would improve or harm their agencies.
A day earlier, Republican senators, concerned about the human and political costs of Musk’s legally murky budget cuts, appeared to secure an on-the-spot commitment from the billionaire to let Congress vote on those cuts rather than having the White House try to implement them unilaterally.
Musk told the senators — nearly all of them former Rubio colleagues — that his Department of Government Efficiency was not responsible for the cuts, according to two people familiar with a discussion that occurred behind closed doors. Not only was his position at odds with his public posture — Musk wielded a toy chain saw at a conservative conference last month — but it implicitly laid blame at the feet of the Cabinet secretaries who would meet with him and Trump the following day.
After listening to the back-and-forth between his Cabinet secretaries and his biggest political benefactor, Trump publicly clipped Musk’s wings. The Senate-confirmed secretaries will have control over who is fired in their departments for now, the president said, with Musk playing a backup role if necessary.
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