Latest news with #SpecialGovernmentEmployee
Daily Mail
06-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Navarro responds to Musk-Trump feud
By Published: | Updated: Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro brushed off the exploding feud between President Trump and Elon Musk by comparing the world's richest man to something a consumer might forget about in the back of the fridge. Navarro, a Trump loyalist who served four months in prison for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena, was among the first Trump Administration officials on camera after the Trump-Musk clash went into meltdown mode. The two men were completely at odds over Trump's tariffs, which prompted a reporter to ask Navarro at the White House whether he was glad to see Musk out of the fray. 'No, I'm not glad. Whatever,' Navarro replied. 'It's – people come and go from the White House. He was a Special Government Employee with an expiration date,' Navarro said. Musk served in government as a 'Special Government Employee,' and the administration cited the 130-day limit when explaining his departure, although Trump had the power to renew it. Trump himself used language Thursday that gave the impression he fired Musk. 'Elon was 'wearing thin,' I asked him to leave,' Trump wrote in just one of his slams on his former first buddy. Later, Navarro, 75, had something nice to say about Musk's team of programmers and aides who got access to agency computer systems and searched for contracts. 'I work with the DOGE folks a lot here, and I've got a very special project, which at some point I'll come out here and talk about with them,' Navarro said. He claimed to have identified a government computer program that 'is run like a 1950s IBM punch card operation at great expense.' 'We're going to turn that from a Model T into a Ferrari,' he said. But he refused to divulge specifics on an extraordinary intervention. 'Stay tuned,' he said. Navarro has been a key proponent of Trump's tariffs, during both the first and second term, helping promote Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs that the administration calls 'reciprocal' to hit back at countries running a trade surplus with the U.S. In his stunning clash with Trump Thursday, Musk wrote that 'The Trump Tariffs will cause a recession in the second half of this year.' That put him at odds with Trump's cherished policy – and Trump's 'favorite word' in the dictionary – even while taking on Trump's 'big, beautiful bill,' which is Trump's top legislative priority. Navarro tried to smooth over the policy differences.
Daily Mail
06-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Trump's trade guru rips into Elon Musk for overstaying 'expiration date' and predicts his next financial move
Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro brushed off the exploding feud between President Trump and Elon Musk by comparing the world's richest man to something a consumer might forget about in the back of the fridge. Navarro, a Trump loyalist who served four months in prison for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena, was among the first Trump Administration officials on camera after the Trump-Musk clash went into meltdown mode. The two men were completely at odds over Trump's tariffs, which prompted a reporter to ask Navarro at the White House whether he was glad to see Musk out of the fray. 'No, I'm not glad. Whatever,' Navarro replied. 'It's – people come and go from the White House. He was a Special Government Employee with an expiration date,' Navarro said. Musk served in government as a 'Special Government Employee,' and the administration cited the 130-day limit when explaining his departure, although Trump had the power to renew it. Trump himself used language Thursday that gave the impression he fired Musk. 'Elon was 'wearing thin,' I asked him to leave,' Trump wrote in just one of his slams on his former first buddy. Later, Navarro, 75, had something nice to say about Musk's team of programmers and aides who got access to agency computer systems and searched for contracts. 'I work with the DOGE folks a lot here, and I've got a very special project, which at some point I'll come out here and talk about with them,' Navarro said. He claimed to have identified a government computer program that 'is run like a 1950s IBM punch card operation at great expense.' 'We're going to turn that from a Model T into a Ferrari,' he said. But he refused to divulge specifics on a extraordinary intervention. 'Stay tuned,' he said. Navarro has been a key proponent of Trump's tariffs, during both the first and second term, helping promote Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs that the administration calls 'reciprocal' to hit back at countries running a trade surplus with the U.S. In his stunning clash with Trump Thursday, Musk wrote that 'The Trump Tariffs will cause a recession in the second half of this year.' That put him at odds with Trump's cherished policy – and Trump's 'favorite word' in the dictionary – even while taking on Trump's 'big, beautiful bill,' which is Trump's top legislative priority. Navarro tried to smooth over the policy differences. 'Well, look, Elon Musk does not like tariffs. Full stop. He's made that clear from Day One and going back to the first term, he's not a tariff guy, which is fine. We can have disagreements about it. But I would say that everybody during our first term who said that the tariffs were going to be recessionary and inflationary were obviously, obviously and widely wrong.'
The Guardian
30-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
So long, Elon: the cuts didn't go to plan, but you completely shredded your reputation
I can't believe that Elon Musk is leaving Doge, the government department he named after a tired and basic meme that most of the internet had moved on from around a decade ago. 'As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end,' Musk wrote this week (capital letters: model's own), 'I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful government spending.' Oh man. 'Thank you for the opportunity'?! At some level you have to salute Donald Trump's ability to turn even the world's richest man into an Apprentice candidate who leaves in week four after completely wiping out in the hotdog stand task. Musk arrived in government promising to slash spending by $2tn. He leaves it a mere $1.86tn short of that target, even by his own estimations. Meanwhile, the president's new tax bill is set to add $2.3tn to the deficit. I imagine Musk thought his government finale would be a spectacular extravaganza – 'you're welcome, Washington!' – involving 2,000 chainsaw-wielding chorus girls. Instead, it's a tweet. And yes – we DO all still call them tweets. Ironically, the thing that Musk has been most stunningly effective at slashing is his own reputation. Think about it. He arrived in Trump's orbit as a somewhat mysterious man, widely regarded as a tech genius, and a titan of the age. He leaves it with vast numbers of people woken up to the fact he's a weird and creepy breeding fetishist, who desperately pretends to be good at video games, and wasn't remotely as key to Space X or Tesla's engineering prowess as they'd vaguely thought. Also, with a number of them apparently convinced he had a botched penile implant. Rightly or wrongly convinced – sure. I'm just asking questions. But look, it's good news for Tesla investors, who have managed to end Musk's practice of WFWH (working from White House), and are now demanding he puts in a 40-hour week to save the company whose stock he has spent the past few months tanking. As the world order dramatically seeks to rearrange itself in the new era of US unreliability, no one should ever be able to unsee the president of the United States's decision to turn the White House lawn into a car sales lot for his sad friend. Did it work? It seems not. Musk spent a lot of this week airing his hurt feelings about his brrm-brrm cars. 'People were burning Teslas,' he whined to Jeff Bezos's Washington Post this week. 'Why would you do that? That's really uncool.' Well, one thing we will no longer have to endure is this guy's decrees on what is or isn't cool. The timeworn thing about money and power is that they allow nerds to reinvent themselves as cool. You see it on Wall Street, where sea-beast financiers get manscaped by trophy wives who are no longer out of their league. You see it in Hollywood, where weird little guys become alpha movie producers. You see it in Bezos's transformation from puffy-chinos-wearing, dress-down-Friday dweeb to Bilderberg Vin Diesel impersonator. What you rarely see is the alchemy of that process in reverse, live and in real time. But we got that with Elon, and we have to take our laughs where we can. In some other businesses, Musk could have convinced himself it wasn't happening, but politics is a place where pollsters literally ask real people what they think of public figures every single week. Elon's approval ratings are underwater. No doubt we're this close to him identifying the real problem: that we simply need new voters. Musk has long been convinced that people don't know how to handle his genius in all fields. Four years ago, he hosted Saturday Night Live, and sometime afterwards revealed on a podcast how the cast and writers had reacted to the uncontainably hilarious suggestions made by him and his team of bros. 'We come in just, like, guns blazing with ideas,' he honked, explaining he'd pitched a … bit, is it? … where he was 'going to take my cock out. So I'm going to reach down into my pants … and then I pull out a baby rooster. Like, 'This is my tiny cock.'' Oh very good, sir. Absolute genius, sir. Presumably terrified that they would lose their jobs forever to this superlative talent, the SNL team declined to 'yes-and' this genius sketch into the final show running order, but Musk managed to get his own back – at least in his account of hosting an episode with a flattering 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 'There's a bunch of things that I said that were just not on the script. They have these cue cards for what you're supposed to say, and I just didn't say it. I just went off the rails.' Mm. Just like you have now. As for where Musk goes next, he's obviously building a Texan compound for the mothers of his many babies. But, psychologically, Mars would seem to be the answer. After a humiliation this big, only colonising another planet feels like the appropriately sized salve. It doesn't matter that Mars is an obvious shithole that looks like the least appealing disused quarry on Earth – a place so bleak and empty that if they found one single fossilised flower it would be celebrated like the holy grail, even though the impossible majesty of the Amazon rainforest is right here. But of course, the point of Mars is that it would be the place of Elon, Teslamandias, king of kings. And you know, I feel more confident than ever that we could all look upon his works and despair. Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
Khaleej Times
30-05-2025
- Business
- Khaleej Times
Trump says Elon Musk is 'terrific', to hold press conference with him on Friday
US President Donald Trump praised Elon Musk on Thursday and said he will hold a press conference with the billionaire, whose tenure in the administration is ending, on Friday at 1.30pm EST (1730 GMT) in the Oval Office. "This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way," Trump said in a post on Truth Social. "Elon is terrific!" Musk announced he was stepping down from his White House stint on Wednesday, giving Tesla investors some succor after shares slumped this year in part due to the backlash to his support of Trump and right-wing parties in Europe. "As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending," he wrote on his social media platform X. The billionaire spearheaded Trump's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, charged with cutting federal spending. On Tuesday, Musk criticised the price tag of Republicans' tax and budget legislation making its way through Congress. In addition, he had recently pledged to spend less money on politics after he plunked down nearly $300 million on Trump's presidential campaign and on other Republican candidates last year.
NHK
29-05-2025
- Business
- NHK
Elon Musk leaving Trump administration after spearheading cost-cutting efforts
Billionaire Elon Musk has announced that he is leaving his government role. He noted that his time as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is coming to an end. In a post on the social media platform X on Wednesday, Musk said that his "scheduled time as a Special Government Employee" is ending. He also thanked President Donald Trump for giving him the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending. Musk added that the "DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government." On the day in January that he was inaugurated, Trump signed an executive order that led to the establishment of DOGE. He also made Musk the head of the department. Musk was permitted to work for the government in that capacity for up to 130 days. Musk declared his support for Trump during Trump's campaign for the presidency last year. He earned the president's trust and wielded influence over the administration's policies. At the same time, mass layoffs of government employees sparked public anger. They also affected business at Musk's electric car company Tesla. In April, Musk said that he would significantly scale back his government work and focus more on running Tesla in May. He said much of his work at DOGE was done.
