Elon Musk is Already Driving White House Aides Nuts
Less than a week into Trump’s term, Musk is already causing headaches for the administration.
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.”