Leavitt Downplays Musk and Bessent's Physical Altercation
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has downplayed reports of a physical bust-up between Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, claimed Musk barrelled into Bessent 'like a rugby player' during an altercation in mid-April. Bessent had reportedly provoked Musk, then still chief of Trump's cost-cutting DOGE drive, by calling the Tesla CEO a 'total fraud' over his pledges to uncover and axe more than $1 trillion in government waste and fraud under the initiative.
'When this story originally broke, I said from the podium that there have definitely been healthy disagreements amongst the cabinet and Elon Musk,' Leavitt told Fox News Sunday.
Leavitt conceded there had been times when Musk and the rest of Trump's cabinet 'got frustrated with one another' but said that the president's team was nevertheless able to 'have these robust disagreements and then still come together to do what's right for the people they are serving.'
Network host Maria Bartiromo was unwilling to let the question go. 'Did he actually get physical?' she pressed Leavitt. 'Was there a fist fight that he body-checked the Treasury secretary?'
Leavitt again downplayed reports of the altercation between the two men and insisted the matter had since been resolved.
'I certainly wouldn't describe it as a fist fight, Maria,' she said. 'It was definitely a disagreement … But again, we've moved on from that. The president has moved on from it.'
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