White House chief of staff details Musk's ‘fatherly fixation' with Trump and their falling out in new interview
The Republican accepted more than $288 million in campaign donations from the Tesla, SpaceX, and X boss last year and rewarded him with a role as a special adviser in charge of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk left the role in late May having fallen out with several cabinet members and after disagreeing profoundly with Trump about the impact of his 'Big, Beautiful Bill' and its effect on the national debt and immediately entered into a bitter and highly personal war of words with the president, conducted largely across social media.
Speaking to Miranda Devine on The New York Post 's Pod Force One podcast, Wiles, 68, agreed with the host's suggestion that the South African-born tech impresario 'had a sort of fatherly fixation with Donald Trump that I guess inevitably was going to blow up at some point.'
'The president was very, very kind to him, and Elon had so much to offer us. He knew things we didn't know. He knew people and technologies that we didn't know. It was a great thing when it was a great thing, and had a very, I think, a very troublesome ending,' she added.
Asked why it had all gone so sour, Wiles answered: 'I don't know. I don't understand it. I don't know. I know that what has been said doesn't ring accurate to me but I don't know.
'I enjoy working with Elon. I think he is a fascinating person and sees the world differently, and I think that's probably what the president saw, too. Just a little bit different than the average Joe. But it certainly came to… not a good ending.'
Wiles – who, along with Chris LaCivita, masterminded Trump's winning presidential run last year – added that she thought Musk 'might be the world's smartest man' and pointed out that he provided input about 'business and organizations and government and insight into people that were really important, I think, in the very early days, particularly during [the] transition.'
Musk's initial spat with Trump early last month was focused on the tax and spending megabill, which the former called a 'disgusting abomination' and 'pork-filled,' leading the president to say he was 'disappointed' with the criticism from his erstwhile 'first buddy.'
From there, it all became much more personal, with Musk alleging that the real reason Trump's Justice Department had not released its files on the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was because the president himself was mentioned in them, a claim the president angrily refuted.
The feud fell silent for several weeks but kicked off again when Trump's signature legislation reached the Senate last week, leading the president to threaten his ex-ally with deportation and cuts to government subsidies benefiting his businesses.
Musk retaliated by launching his own political party, the America Party, to peel votes away from both Republicans and Democrats, which led Trump to comment that the world's richest man had 'gone off the rails' and become a 'trainwreck.'
Wiles did disagree with Devine when she floated the idea that jealousy might have played a role in the falling out between the two men, saying, revealingly: 'That doesn't sound like Elon.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
EV battery firm LG Energy sees demand slowdown after Q2 profit jump
SEOUL, July 25 (Reuters) - South Korean battery firm LG Energy Solution ( opens new tab on Friday warned of a slowdown in demand due to U.S. tariffs and policy uncertainties after it posted a quarterly profit jump. LGES, which supplies Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab, General Motors (GM.N), opens new tab and Volkswagen among other automakers, said its operating profit more than doubled in the second quarter, partly due to front-loaded demand as some customers stockpiled batteries ahead of potential U.S. tariffs. It reported an operating profit of 492 billion won ($358.73 million) for the April-June period, versus a 195 billion won profit a year earlier. That compared with a 298 billion won average forecast by LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward analysts who are more consistently accurate. LGES would have made a 1.4 billion won operating profit excluding a tax credit it received under the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, LGES said in a regulatory filing. LGES Shares were down 1.9% after the earnings announcement. Its customers such as GM and Tesla are bracing for further fallout from U.S. tariffs and an additional slowdown in demand for electric vehicles. The United States passed legislation to end federal subsidies for EV purchases on September 30. ($1 = 1,371.5000 won)
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
Breakingviews - The debt supercycle has reached its final leg
LONDON, July 24 (Reuters Breakingviews) - British politicians know that their workplace, the Palace of Westminster, is in a shambolic state. The 19th-century complex of buildings suffers from an infestation of vermin, falling masonry, leaking water from lead piping, and worn-out electric wiring. There's a constant danger of fire. Yet the occupants cannot summon up the will to tackle the problem. They shelved elaborate and costly renovation plans several years ago. Instead, the decaying structures are temporarily patched up. Yet the longer the delay, the higher the estimated costs of the building works and the greater the risk of a catastrophic incident, Parliament's Public Accounts Committee has warned. There's another challenge that Britain's political class seem incapable of rising to. Since the pandemic, UK public borrowing has been on a sharp upward trajectory. By the end of last year, the national debt approached 100% of GDP and the fiscal deficit was over 5%. The Office for Budget Responsibility warns, opens new tab that if nothing changes the public debt will reach 270% of annual output over the next 50 years. A recent relatively minor act of fiscal restraint – the Labour government's proposal to cut winter fuel payments to wealthier retirees – was reversed after it ran into fierce opposition from the party's own lawmakers. Last month, the state borrowed a further 21 billion pounds, its highest ever monthly net borrowing (aside from the pandemic year), and 3.6 billion pounds higher than the OBR had predicted. Britain is hardly an outlier among the large, developed economies. France's public debt is even higher at 112% of GDP and last year's budget deficit was 5.7% of economic output. U.S. public debt last year reached 121% of GDP and its fiscal deficit hovers around 7%. In its latest Fiscal Monitor, opens new tab the International Monetary Fund exhorts governments to 'put their fiscal house in order.' In principle, sovereign insolvency is not inevitable. Governments could raise taxes, cut spending and act decisively to boost economic growth. If they took these tough measures, pesky fiscal deficits would gradually evaporate. But the political resolve is lacking. Britain's OBR notes that 'public expectations of what government can and should do in response to emerging threats and future emergencies seem to be rising.' French Prime Minister François Bayrou warns that his country is addicted to borrowing and just 'one step away from the cliff.' Yet France's latest, faintly comic, plan to reduce the fiscal deficit involves cancelling two national holidays, an act which is strongly opposed on both the left and the right. Across the Atlantic, whatever savings were achieved by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency have been completely overwhelmed by President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the Congressional Budget Office predicts, opens new tab will add a further $3.4 trillion to U.S. deficits over the next decade. The root of the problem appears to be cultural. In his book, opens new tab, 'The Fourth Turning is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End', demographer Neil Howe posits that human societies pass through multi-generational cycles. In the first generation, society is strong, cohesive and optimistic. The next generation experiences an 'awakening' in which established values come under attack. There follows an 'unravelling' as institutions weaken, civic order decays and society becomes increasingly polarised. 'Incompetent governance, ebbing public trust, and declining public compliance all feed on one another in a vicious cycle,' intones Howe. The resolution finally comes with a 'fourth turning' when a new civic order replaces the old one. Howe's long cycle originates with the work of the 15th-century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, who traced the rise and fall of ruling dynasties through changes in group cohesion. By Khaldun's fourth generation the founders' collective spirit has become widely despised, complex laws are evaded, vast riches are hoarded by the few and 'destroyers' preside over the dynasty's collapse. Hard-nosed financial types may find this civilisational cycle somewhat nebulous. But it appears to complement the broadly accepted notion of a debt supercycle – a multidecade period in which total borrowings ratchet ever higher. In his latest book, 'How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle', Ray Dalio takes issue with 'the insouciant belief that there's no limit to government debt or debt growth, especially for countries with a reserve currency.' The veteran hedge fund manager's 'big debt cycle' lasts around 80 years (roughly the same periodicity as Howe's revolution). Over the course of Dalio's cycle, sound money gives way to government-issued fiat money, the private sector takes on too much debt, at which point the government steps in to bail out borrowers, and total debt keeps on rising. As the cycle nears its end, a country is typically beset by chronic fiscal deficits. Low domestic savings and current account deficits render it dependent on foreign lenders. As lenders become wary, the average maturity of the public debt shortens. The central bank finds it impossible to set interest rates at the level which balances the needs of both creditors and borrowers. Once interest rates rise, governments' debt servicing costs become increasingly onerous. Government finances come to resemble a Ponzi scheme, with new debt being issued to service old borrowing. That pretty much describes the situation which several advanced economies, including Britain, France and the United States, find themselves in today. The investment conclusions from Dalio's historical study are unsurprising. Owning government bonds at the end of a debt supercycle is not a good idea. Faced with a crisis, central banks usually bail out their governments. When inflation picks up, currencies depreciate on the foreign exchanges. Real assets are a safer bet. Stocks tend to decline into the crisis but generally recover their losses in the aftermath. Gold shines, beating bonds on average by 71% during crisis periods, according to Dalio. 'History is seasonal, winter is here,' writes the dismal prophet Howe. Dalio does not think a debt crisis is imminent, but believes one is likely to arrive within the next decade. Bondholders are forewarned. On the bright side, it's possible that by then a more resolute generation of parliamentarians will have started work on fixing the Palace of Westminster. Follow @Breakingviews, opens new tab on X
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
Elon Musk's Starlink network suffers rare global outage
July 24 (Reuters) - SpaceX's Starlink suffered one of its biggest international outages on Thursday when an internal software failure knocked tens of thousands of users offline, a rare disruption for Elon Musk's powerful satellite internet system. Users in the U.S. and Europe began experiencing the outage at around 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), according to Downdetector, a crowdsourced outage tracker that said as many as 61,000 user reports to the site were made. Starlink, which has more than 6 million users across roughly 140 countries and territories, later acknowledged the outage on its X account and said "we are actively implementing a solution." Starlink service mostly resumed after 2.5 hours, Michael Nicolls, Starlink vice president of Starlink Engineering, wrote on X. "The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network," Nicolls said, apologizing for the disruption and vowing to find its root cause. Musk had also apologized: "Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn't happen again," the SpaceX CEO wrote on X. The outage was a rare hiccup for SpaceX's most commercially sensitive business that had experts speculating whether the service, known for its resilience and rapid growth, was beset by a glitch, a botched software update or even a cyberattack. Doug Madory, an expert at the internet analysis firm Kentik, said the outage was global and that such a sweeping interruption was unusual. "This is likely the longest outage ever for Starlink, at least while it became a major service provider," Madory said. As Starlink gained more users, SpaceX has focused heavily in recent months on updating its network to accommodate demands for higher speed and bandwidth. The company in a partnership with T-Mobile (TMUS.O), opens new tab is also expanding the constellation with larger, more powerful satellites to offer direct-to-cell text messaging services, a line of business in which mobile phone users can send emergency text messages through the network in rural areas. SpaceX has launched more than 8,000 Starlink satellites since 2020, building a uniquely distributed network in low-Earth orbit that has attracted intense demand from militaries, transportation industries and consumers in rural areas with poor access to traditional, fiber-based internet. "I'd speculate this is a bad software update, not entirely dissimilar to the CrowdStrike mess with Windows last year, or a cyberattack," said Gregory Falco, director of a space and cybersecurity laboratory at Cornell University. An update to CrowdStrike's (CRWD.O), opens new tab widely used cybersecurity software led to worldwide flight cancellations and impacted industries around the globe in July last year. The outage disrupted internet services, affecting 8.5 million Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab Windows devices. It was unclear whether Thursday's outage affected SpaceX's other satellite-based services that rely on the Starlink network. Starshield, the company's military satellite business unit, has billions of dollars' worth of contracts with the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.
