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Miami Herald
a day ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Trump's promises of easy wins meet reality during a rocky week
President Donald Trump returned to office promising to easily fix generationally intractable problems, from quickly brokering peace in Ukraine and the Middle East to overhauling the federal government and rewriting the global trade order. But this week showed just how far he is from solving any of them. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ignored his calls for a ceasefire with Ukraine. Trump, after he spent months mocking former President Joe Biden's efforts to rein in Israel's military activity, had to cajole Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against a strike on Iran. Billionaire adviser Elon Musk is exiting his high-profile government reform post amid a swirl of stories about interpersonal fighting within the West Wing and his drug use - and a fraction of the touted savings to show for it. The broadest blow may have come this week when the U.S. Court of International Trade found Trump could not use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify many of his tariffs, a shortcut Trump was hoping would allow him to negotiate quick deals without long investigations into other nations' trade policies or turning some of the power over to Congress. As of May 1, Trump was losing in 128 of the hundreds of lawsuits filed to stop his executive orders, with green lights from courts in 43 cases, according to a Bloomberg analysis. He often complains that going through normal government procedures takes too long. When a court insisted he allow thousands of deportees due process to fight their removal, he lamented how long thousands of trials would take. Similarly, he bemoans that working with Congress on any variety of issues would become bogged down in bureaucratic and legislative briar patches. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt complained bitterly about judicial rulings that don't go Trump's way, noting that in his first term, the number of judicial injunctions against Trump's policies "account for more than half of the injunctions issued in this country since 1963." She added that in his current term, Trump has had more injunctions in a month than Biden had in three years. "There is an effort by this administration to tackle these rogue judges and the injunctions and the blockades that we have faced in our broken judicial system in every case," she said. His trade policies are now causing whiplash for countries and businesses as the ruling is tied up in court. The White House has asked the Supreme Court to swiftly step in, even before an appellate court on Thursday temporarily allowed the tariffs to continue while they considered the case. But rather than retreat, or redesign his policies to withstand - or even avoid - court challenges, Trump lashes out, complaining about judicial overreach and Biden policies while touting other actions. "President Trump has quickly delivered on the promises he made on the campaign trail: Gas prices are down, the border is secure, migrant criminals are deported, and America is strong in the eyes of the world," said Anna Kelly, the deputy White House press secretary. Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, said Trump's words about tariffs, the Middle East and Russia made him look "strong and powerful," but that "now he's facing reality, and he's got to figure out how to get through this next period of time." Wars on 2 continents With his tariff regime and immigration policies slowed, Trump is also frustrated by two wars he promised would be easy to resolve. He has failed to secure the quick Ukraine peace deal he was hoping to wring out of a call Monday with Putin, with whom he is showing increasing irritation. "I'm not happy with what Putin is doing," Trump told reporters last weekend, adding he is considering new sanctions against Russia. The frustration is amplifying as Moscow is ramping up its attacks into Ukraine with some of the biggest strikes of the three-year war this month. In the Middle East, Trump is attempting what many of his predecessors have tried and failed to do - secure a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump, a staunch defender of Israel, has seen both Netanyahu and Hamas ignore his entreaties to stop strikes or release Israeli hostages. Tariffs and taxes The tariff ruling is now raising questions about whether Trump's tax bill, with tax cuts skewed toward the wealthy and spending reductions, will bring in enough revenue without the promised tariff revenue. The House's version of the tax and spending bill is headed to the Senate, where some Republicans are pressing for extensive changes. The bill includes a $4 trillion increase in the U.S. debt ceiling, adding urgency for Congress as the Treasury Department forecasts the U.S. otherwise could face a default as soon as August or September. Trump has worked the phones, directly pleading with some lawmakers, to support some of his nominees and legislative efforts. He's turned to social media and speeches to train criticism on GOP naysayers who could derail his tax cut legislation, deriding them as "grandstanders" that need to fall in line. DOGE As Trump works to get his tax bill enacted, Musk is leaving Trump's inner circle to return to his private businesses, raising questions about the future of the Department of Government Efficiency effort he spearheaded. The savings turned out to be a fraction of what Musk predicted. "He doesn't understand the larger complexities that are at play, the historical complexities that are at play," said Christina Greer, associate professor of political science at Fordham University, Lincoln Center. "And so we've seen time and time again that this is a president who creates a problem, creates a lot of hubub, then walks back from the problem and then says he solved the problem." --- (With assistance from Jennifer A. Dlouhy.) Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Buzz Feed
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
When My Soulmate Chose My Roommate Instead
I had to put miles between myself and Jason, so I grabbed the keys to my rusty jeep and hit Interstate 10. By the time sunset surrendered the last light of day over the Gulf, I was at the Beau Rivage Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. Inside was a deserted solarium with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the water. Dazed, I sat in a lounge chair for hours and just stared at the view. It was like someone had just pushed me out of a fifth-floor window ― though everything may have looked fine on the outside, I was bleeding internally. Up until then, heartbreak had been a purely abstract concept for me ― merely the inspiration for a catchy country tune on the radio or a subplot in a rom-com ― but it had nothing to do with my life. Then everything changed. Jason and I met at a crowded bar on the first day of law school orientation week, when I tripped and spilled a glass of IPA onto a stranger's T-shirt. 'I'm so sorry,' I sputtered. The owner of the shirt had reassuring brown eyes. 'Don't worry, I've got five more of these at home,' he offered kindly while wiping beer off his arm with a good-natured grin. 'I'm Jason.' During our first week of classes, we passed notes like we were in junior high and choked back laughs. Law school was a shark tank, but his magical levity made it criminally fun. After school, we sprawled on the flannel coverlet of his bed and studied civil procedure, argued about Star Wars trivia, and binged West Wing, long into the night. Without the complications of sex to trigger my defenses, my armor slowly dissolved into sand. I was caught off-guard when Jason brought me (and two oyster po' boys) to watch the sunset at a grassy spot on the Mississippi called Riverbend. My spidey sense belatedly signaled this might be a pre-planned romantic interlude. I'd never been in a serious relationship, and it chilled me to think that he wanted something I didn't know how to give. 'Listen, I can't date anyone right now,' I told him. 'Can we just keep things as they are?' He nodded pensively, obviously hurt but trying not to show it, and then fixed his gaze on a riverboat full of sozzled tourists passing in front of us. 'It's OK, I get it,' he eventually responded. Later that night, my roommate Sarah wanted to know if anything had 'happened' with Jason. 'I really don't look at him that way. We're just buddies,' I told her. 'In that case, you wouldn't mind if I dated him, would you?' she asked. I got a queasy feeling in my stomach. I didn't like where this was going, but I doubled down and gave her the answer she wanted: 'Of course not, why would I mind?' I finally woke up to reality one afternoon when I didn't find Jason at our planned meeting spot at the racquetball court. I paced and paced. What if something had happened? God, I was worried. Wait ... why was I so worried? Twenty minutes later, I spotted his floppy brown hair running towards me. 'Where the hell have you been?!' I blurted at him. He caught me in a bear hug while I choked back relief and exasperation. Then, all of a sudden, it hit me like a cold bucket of ice over the head: Oh. This is what it feels like when you love somebody. The sensation was unlike anything my clueless 26-year-old self had ever felt. Unsure of what to do about my feelings, I dithered for months until I finally took a chance in the kitchen after a late-night study session. 'I was wrong when I said I wasn't looking to date someone,' I told Jason. 'I think I Iove...' Jason immediately cut me off. 'Listen, if soulmates exist, we're it. But I'm no good for you that way,' he said. 'I always mess things up. Friendships last.' At the time, all that I heard him say was 'soulmate.' In Greek legend, humans once had four arms and legs, and two faces, but Zeus split them into two as punishment for their pride, so they would forever walk the earth in search of their other half. Here was my other half. My heart sprouted wings and took flight. It soared out of my chest and launched into the stratosphere. It felt like pure bliss. I came home a few nights later and found Jason and Sarah unloading groceries to make a romantic sushi dinner. I had a sudden, sickening realization: While I was distracted by thoughts of soulmates, I'd missed the signs that they were busy becoming a couple. Oh, what a pathetic fool I was. There was barely time to make it outside to my jeep before the tears started rolling down my cheeks, and then I just kept driving until I got to Biloxi. There were no answers in the black of the water that night, so when I returned, I started looking for a new apartment. I tried dating other people. With Jason, the world appeared in technicolor, but with anyone else, everything was clad in disappointing tones of grey. I nursed guilty, dangerous fantasies that he would break up with Sarah and choose me, but things between them were practically etched in stone. When they lost a rescue cat and dog in close succession, I cruelly joked that Sarah's track record with pets was a bad sign. Graciously, she let it pass. Green was definitely not a good look on me. Over the next two years, my friendship with Jason carried on as it always had with study sessions, racquetball, West Wing, po' boys, and concerts. I never mentioned how I felt ― or how much misery I experienced when I saw him with Sarah instead of me. At graduation, Jason, Sarah, and I hosted a joint farewell reception together. I disguised my agony with convincing smiles as they introduced their families to each other. Then they moved west to San Diego, got married, and had two adorable kids. My life felt like it was over before it had even begun. In the months after Jason moved, our favorite song by J. Ralph would come on the radio, and I'd pull my car over to wail gut-wrenching, almost demonic-sounding sobs until the hurt was temporarily out of my system. I nearly lost friends from all of the whining I was doing. They finally told me to 'get over it,' like I was dealing with a pesky case of the flu, not a full-fledged broken heart. If only it were that easy. On a trip to Nicaragua, I tumbled drunkenly into bed with my hot surf instructor, the most action I'd seen in ages. Progress! The next morning, we sipped coffee and watched the sunrise. 'So, who's Jason?' he asked. 'You talk a lot in your sleep. I hope he knows he's a lucky guy.' My chiropractor, a spiritual medicine healer, convinced me to dance around a fire in a cleansing ceremony to rid me of any lingering curses that might be the source of my trouble, which felt ludicrous. Was it bad karma? Punishment from the gods? More likely, the problem was me. By refusing to take a risk that day on the river bend, I lost something irreplaceable. Fear had been guarding my heart, and I knew the only way forward was to confront it head-on, which meant looking deep into the place inside myself that I most dreaded. I saw a therapist, who uncovered an attachment disorder as the origin of my obsession over someone I could never have and my fear of getting close to anyone else. 'Back in '02, were you even emotionally ready to have a relationship with Jason?' she asked me. 'Could you have been a good partner to him at that time?' We both knew the answer without me saying it out loud. It took a while to believe in happy endings again. I gradually got into the relationship game but kept the stakes low. First, I dated a cowboy who was 20 years older than me and had no interest in marriage. Then an Irish alcoholic poet who was still pining for his ex-girlfriend. The inevitable breakups were bittersweet, tolerable, and nothing like what I felt in Biloxi. A decade later, at our 10-year law school reunion, Jason gave me his familiar bear hug. He still smelled of soap and sweat and paper. I scanned the flecks of grey in his hair and the lines in his face that traced the passage of time. We had kept in touch, but I had never told him how hard I had struggled to overcome my feelings for him. I braced for the familiar ache in my chest I expected to show up. Surprisingly, it didn't come. The combination of the protective scar tissue I'd formed there and all of the work I'd done in therapy to understand what I'd done and why meant I was now equipped to withstand an emotional hurricane — but the winds didn't even start blowing. I wasn't the same person I'd been a decade ago, I'd learned a lot about myself, and I was happy for Jason and Sarah. And as the only single and dateless person in the room, I felt like a badass for just being there ― alone but completely content. Maybe dancing around that fire had done some good after all. The following December, my Mom asked me about Brian, a new guy I was dating. As I described him to her, a familiar sensation stopped me dead in my tracks. It was that same cold bucket of ice water I'd felt dumped over my head on the racquetball court years ago. I jumped up and grabbed my phone to text him immediately. If I had learned anything, it was that opportunities like this did not come along every day. Two years later, Brian and I vacationed at El Limón waterfall in the Dominican Republic. While posing for a selfie with the water soaking our backs, he took out a ring and asked to marry me. My mouth popped open like a soda can. This time around, the fear that defended me so fiercely with Jason was relaxing on the couch with a beer. This time, I said yes without hesitation ― and with a side of compassion for the woman-child I had been on that river bend. I used to blame her for ruining my one shot at love. Now, I wanted to tell her that mistakes are all part of the journey, that she would overcome her fears with time, and that her adventures were just beginning. I wanted to let her know that second chances do exist. Note: Names and some details have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals in this essay. Michelle Powers is an attorney, sommelier, and writer in San Diego, where she lives with her husband, Brian, and two dogs.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
'Intensely loyal' Jill Biden aide despised by White House staffers, new book claims
President Joe Biden's aides consider first lady Jill Biden one of the most powerful first ladies in history, according to the new book, "Original Sin," by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios political correspondent Alex Thompson. By proxy, the first lady's top aide, Anthony Bernal, became one of the most influential people in the White House, Tapper and Thompson said in their new book about Biden's cognitive decline and the administration's alleged cover-up. "He would not be welcome at my funeral," a longtime Biden aide told the authors. Operating in a White House anchored in loyalty, Bernal wielded loyalty as a weapon to weed out the defectors, Tapper and Thompson said. 'The Kamala Excuse': Tensions Between Biden And Harris Plagued Their Campaigns, New Book Reveals "He considered loyalty to be the defining virtue and would wield that word to elevate some and oust others – at times fairly and at times not. 'Are you a Biden person?' he would ask West Wing aides. 'Is so-and-so a Biden person?' The regular interrogations led some colleagues to dub him the leader of the 'loyalty police,'" the journalists wrote in "Original Sin." Read On The Fox News App New Book Reveals Biden's Inner Circle Worried About His Age Years Before Botched Debate Performance During the pandemic, Biden traded the campaign trail for lockdown. Two aides, Bernal and Annie Tomasini, found their way into Joe and Jill Biden's pod, shifting the power dynamic of Biden's so-called "Politiburo," the group of advisors who steered Biden's political orbit. Tapper and Thompson describe the "intensely loyal" duo as taking on an "older-brother-and-little-sister vibe." Thompson even had the title of deputy campaign manager, which Tapper and Thompson said was "unusual for a staffer to a spouse." The duo were the masterminds behind loading a teleprompter for Biden ahead of a local interview, a misstep that followed Biden's campaign. "The significance of Bernal and Tomasini is the degree to which their rise in the Biden White House signaled the success of people whose allegiance was to the Biden family – not to the presidency, not to the American people, not to the country, but to the Biden theology," the authors wrote. Tapper and Thompson said it was difficult to find many Bernal defenders and described him as using his power to cast out "potential heretics." As Bernal earned a reputation for trash-talking fellow aides, "some even described him as the worst person they had ever met," Tapper and Thompson said. Bernal and Tomasini took on some of the residence staffers' roles in the White House. Tapper and Thompson said the aides "had all-time access to the living quarters, with their White House badges reading 'Res' – uncommon for such aides." When the Biden campaign began gearing up for a re-election campaign and some voiced fears about his age or battleground state polling, Bernal and other senior staffers reacted dismissively about Vice President Kamala Harris launching a bid. Bernal is quoted in the book as having said, "You don't run for four years – you run for eight." "He had already begun planning the first lady's 2025 international travel schedule," Tapper and Thompson said. Bernal worked overtime to elevate Jill Biden's "profile and glamour," freely criticizing her looks and outfits and even calling her "Jill," according to the authors. Jill Biden and Bernal worked in tandem, keeping score of "who was with them and against them." The book described the first lady as "one of the chief supporters of the president's decision to run for reelection, and one of the chief deniers of his deterioration." Bernal's loyalty to the Bidens never faltered, and even after the disastrous debate performance in July 2024, Jill Biden and Bernal were determined to keep pushing on through November, Tapper and Thompson said. Fox News Digital has written extensively dating back to the 2020 presidential campaign about Biden's cognitive decline and his inner circle's role in covering it up. A former White House staffer fired back against Tapper and Thompson's allegations about Bernal in a statement to Fox News Digital. "A lot of vignettes in this book are either false, exaggerated, or purposefully omit viewpoints that don't fit the narrative they want to push. Anthony was a strong leader with high standards and a mentor to many. He's the type of person you want on a team - he's incredibly strategic, effective, and cares deeply about the people he manages," the former White House staffer article source: 'Intensely loyal' Jill Biden aide despised by White House staffers, new book claims
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Decline and Fall of Elon Musk
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. Updated at 6:50 p.m. ET on May 21, 2025. 'Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!' Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was shouting at Elon Musk in the halls of the West Wing last month, loud enough for Donald Trump to hear and in a language that he could certainly understand. Bessent and Musk were fighting over which of them should choose the next IRS leader—and, implicitly, over Musk's bureaucracy-be-damned crusade. Without securing the Treasury chief's sign-off, Musk had pushed through his own pick for the job. Bessent was, quite obviously, not having it. The fight had started outside the Oval Office; it continued past the Roosevelt Room and toward the chief of staff's office, and then barreled around the corner to the national security adviser's warren. Musk accused Bessent of having run two failed hedge funds. 'I can't hear you,' he told Bessent as they argued, their faces just inches apart. 'Say it louder.' Musk came to Washington all Cybertrucks and chain saws, ready to destroy the bureaucracy, fire do-nothing federal workers, and, he bragged, save taxpayers $2 trillion in the process. He was a Tech Support–T-shirt-wearing disruptor who promised to rewire how the government operates and to defeat the 'woke mind virus,' all under the auspices of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. For weeks, he and his merry band of DOGE bros gleefully jumped from agency to agency, terrorizing bureaucrats, demanding access to sensitive data, and leaving snack wrappers on employees' desks. But as Musk winds down his official time in Washington, he has found himself isolated within the upper reaches of the Trump administration, having failed to build necessary alliances and irritating many of the department and agency heads he was ostensibly there to help. His team failed to find anything close to the 13-figure savings he'd promised. Court challenges clipped other projects. Cabinet secretaries blocked DOGE cuts they said reduced crucial services. All the while, Musk's net worth fell, his companies tanked in value, and he became an object of frequent gossip and ridicule. Four months after Musk's swashbuckling arrival, he is effectively moving on, shifting his attention back to his jobs as the leader of Tesla, SpaceX, and X, among his other companies. In a call last month with Wall Street analysts, Musk said he was planning to spend 'a day or two per week' focusing on DOGE issues—similar to how he manages each of his various companies. The next week, he seemed to suggest that he'd be slimming down his government portfolio even more, telling reporters that he expected to be in Washington 'every other week.' Yesterday, he told the Qatar Economic Forum in a video interview that he no longer sees a reason to spend money on politics, though that could change in the future. 'I think I've done enough,' he said. [Listen: Elon Musk's luck runs out] He remains close with Trump, who still shows genuine affection for his billionaire benefactor, according to advisers and allies. But Musk's decision to focus elsewhere has been greeted as a relief by many federal leaders, who have been busily undoing many of his cuts in their departments or making DOGE-style changes on their own terms. Cabinet leaders—who did not appreciate being treated like staff by the man boasting about feeding their fiefdom into a 'wood chipper'—have widely ignored some of his efforts, such as his February demand that all federal employees send weekly emails to their supervisors laying out their accomplishments in bullet points. 'How many people were fired because they didn't send in their three things a week or whatever the fuck it was?' one Trump adviser, who requested anonymity to speak frankly, told us. 'I think that everyone is ready to move on from this part of the administration.' The Musk-Bessent shouting match was immediate fodder—for gossip, of course, but also for a kind of Rorschach test for MAGA-world loyalties. Several members of the administration heard it themselves. Many, many more learned about it secondhand, or even thirdhand. (Some of the details were first reported by The New York Times and Axios.) A mild-mannered billionaire stood up to 'a man-child'! Musk rugby-shouldered Bessent! There was definitely nothing physical! There was caterwauling! Musk should have been arrested! Musk did nothing wrong! It wasn't even a big deal! After the shouting ended, Musk's pick for IRS commissioner found himself replaced with Bessent's more seasoned choice after just three days on the job. Bessent had won. The power struggle has become a symbol of Musk's inability to build support for his approach. This story is based on interviews with 14 White House advisers, outside allies, and confidants, who all requested anonymity to describe private conversations. The White House and the Treasury Department declined to comment on the specifics of the fight, and a representative for Musk did not respond to requests for comment. A couple of weeks after his argument with Bessent, Musk gathered reporters in the Roosevelt Room to defend himself, admitting that his latest goal of $1 trillion in taxpayer spending—already down from his initial $2 trillion target—had proved 'really, really difficult.' 'We are making as much progress as we can—there's a lot of inertia in the government,' he told the assembled press. 'So it's, like, it's not easy. This is—this is a way to make a lot of enemies and not that many friends.' At the core of Musk's challenges was his unfamiliarity with reforming an organization that, unlike his own companies, he does not fully control. Rather than taking the time to navigate and understand the quirks and nuances of the federal government—yes, an often lumbering and inefficient institution—Musk instead told his team to move fast: It would be better to backtrack later, if necessary, than to proceed with caution. (One administration official told us that Musk's view was that if he hadn't fired so many people that he needed to rehire some, it would mean that he hadn't cut enough.) As he sought to solve spending and digital-infrastructure problems, he often created new issues for Trump, the president's top advisers, and Capitol Hill allies. 'He came with a playbook that comes from outside government, and there were mixed returns on that,' Matt Calkins, the CEO of Appian, a Virginia-based software company that automates business processes and has worked with the federal government for more than two decades, told us. 'He comes in with his idealism and his Silicon Valley playbook, and a few interesting things happened. Does the 'move fast and break things' model work in Washington? Not really.' Calkins told us that he very much supports Musk's stated goals: government efficiency and modernization, and harnessing technology to improve the lives of citizens. But, he explained, Washington will never work the way Silicon Valley does. Its capacity for disruption is lower; although people may enjoy summoning Uber rides or ordering food via their phone, they do not rely on these innovations the way many do on, say, public education or Medicaid. 'Government is a foundation, versus a technology company that usually provides a bonus—something we enjoy consuming, but not something we count on,' Calkins said. Musk's operation claims to have found $170 billion in savings by cutting grants, contracts, leases, and other spending, though the numbers have frequently been revised down owing to errors and program reinstatements. The federal workforce—roughly 4.5 million employees, including military personnel—is slated to be reduced by tens of thousands, though many of those cuts are now in limbo because of recent court orders. White House aides privately admit that a high-profile claim of fraud that Musk uncovered—that some people in Social Security databases are listed as unrealistically old—is a data problem but not evidence of actual fraud: The government had already blocked payments to those people before Musk pointed them out. (Nevertheless, Trump repeated the claim in his first official address to Congress, in March, and Musk caused a mini political crisis for the administration when he appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast and declared Social Security—an entitlement that Trump has promised not to touch—'the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.') Most important, Trump has made clear that Musk did not have the freedom to reshape the government as he would one of his companies. Weeks after Musk appeared onstage with a chain saw to illustrate his plans for the federal government, Trump rebuked the approach on social media: 'We say the 'scalpel' rather than the 'hatchet,'' Trump wrote. Musk's legal opponents have taken to celebrating his departure as a defeat for his larger ambitions. They point to public polling that shows that his public favorability has fallen markedly since the start of the year, as well as to the backlash he faced when he went to Wisconsin to campaign for a Republican-backed state-supreme-court candidate who ended up losing by double digits. 'We kicked him out of town,' Rushab Sanghvi, the general counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees, told us. 'If he had stayed in the shadows and done his stuff, who knows how bad it would have been? But no one likes the guy.' At a Cabinet meeting at the end of April, possibly Musk's last, the Tesla and SpaceX leader reduced himself to a punch line, wearing two caps—a red Gulf of America one perched atop his signature black DOGE hat. He joked about all the jobs that he was juggling. 'As they say, I wear a lot of hats. And as you can see, it's true. Even my hat has a hat,' he said, prompting genuine laughter. The uprising against Musk—in hindsight, the abrupt beginning of the slow end—had begun in the same room a month earlier, at an impromptu meeting. Cabinet secretaries, who had not yet been confirmed for office when Musk began his work, had been expressing frustration to Trump and to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, among others, about Musk's meddling. Musk, meanwhile, had been griping about what he viewed as the slow pace of hiring. In fact, the Trump administration had been staffing up remarkably quickly by federal standards for a new administration. But, as one White House adviser explained to us, 'if you're Elon, in the business of firing people, it's easy to see hiring through a different lens.' Sick of presiding over the competing complaints, Trump finally declared: Bring them all in here, and we'll have at it. The next day, the Cabinet secretaries did just that. Details of the meeting—including Musk's heated back-and-forth with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as with Doug Collins, the secretary of veterans affairs, and Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary—almost immediately leaked into news reports. Musk upbraided Rubio during the meeting for not sufficiently reducing his staff, and Rubio—already upset that Musk had essentially dissolved USAID, one of the agencies under his purview—vigorously fought back. ('That was one of the turning points for Trump and Marco, where Trump realized Marco had a little spine,' one Trump ally told us.) Several people told us that though Musk understood that he was walking into an ambush, he was unaware of the extent of the coming pile-on. After the 'whining about DOGE' and Musk generally 'taking it,' someone familiar with the meeting told us, Musk defended his efforts. At one point, he declared that his real problem was not with firing people or reducing the size of government but with quickly hiring new, better people. (Early on, Musk had been irritated that he couldn't instantaneously hire DOGE engineers, who found themselves subjected to the same MAGA loyalty tests as everyone else, and he was unable to muscle onto the government payroll a Turkish-born venture capitalist with a green card, because U.S. law generally prohibits noncitizens from working for the federal government.) Sergio Gor, the director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, defended the pace of hiring, which he oversees. The relationship between Musk and Gor had already been tense, several advisers told us; one adviser explained that the two men were 'constantly sniping at each other.' Sometime after the Cabinet meeting, Musk went to the president and, referring to Gor, said, 'Please tell me I never have to ask him for anything again,' the adviser told us. With Musk's DOGE team largely in place, he and Gor have had less reason in recent weeks to interact. Others told us that the two men have since buried any disagreements and get along fine. But the clash was yet another example of Musk chafing against the strictures of government processes, something Gor's office is designed to uphold. 'There's not a lot of reverence for the system with Elon,' the Trump adviser told us. 'It's not a perfect system, but it is nonetheless our system.' Musk's influence on the early months of the Trump administration is, of course, undeniable. He regularly amplified administration messaging—and occasionally undercut it—on X, the social-media platform he owns. And he focused attention on an issue that many voters agree should be a priority, at least in theory: eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in Washington, and making the government more efficient and technologically nimble. He also cut large swaths of the federal workforce, albeit in such a 'haphazard' way, as one adviser put it to us, that the actual results have proved mixed. Some talented and experienced career bureaucrats—the sorts of officials Trump and Musk ostensibly wanted to retain—decamped to the private sector or took early retirement, and the general chaos led to some fired employees being hired back. At the Federal Aviation Administration, Musk's interference and cuts have caused mayhem, especially among already overtaxed air-traffic controllers. Musk also made himself the public face of the Trump administration's decision to shut down USAID, a decision that the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates described as 'the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children.' (Musk, who'd initially earned the fraught designation of 'co-president' and seemed destined for a rocket-fuel-caliber blowup with the actual president, also lasted much longer in government than many had surmised he would—and is exiting with something akin to grace, at least by Trumpian standards.) Ayushi Roy, a former technologist at the General Services Administration who now teaches digital government at Harvard Kennedy School, told us that Musk has achieved at least some of his goals: cutting the federal workforce and traumatizing the employees who remain. But, she said, he has largely failed to build anything that's made government more efficient. 'I am waiting for them to actually deliver something. Right now they have just been deleting things. They haven't added any value,' she told us. 'If it is just us hatcheting things instead of improving or even replacing them, the goal, to me, is not actually about improving efficiency.' Calkins, the software CEO, cautioned us to not undersell what Musk has done. Given the 'resolute structure' of government bureaucracy, he said, it's impressive that Musk even 'got a few big nicks.' In Calkins's view, Musk might have been more successful had he been given more time—maybe a year and a half, he estimated. He told us that he thinks more cuts to government are necessary, but that Musk's approach was insufficiently judicious. 'In retrospect,' Calkins concluded, 'it wasn't nearly as much as we needed, and we probably didn't need the chain saw. We needed the chisel.' Musk struggled to adjust to life outside his companies, where his whims reigned supreme and he rarely needed to build consensus. 'He miscalculated his ability to act just completely autonomously,' one outside Trump adviser told us. 'He had some missteps in all of these agencies, which would have been fine because everyone acknowledges that when you're moving fast and breaking things, not everything is going to go right. But it's different when you do that and you don't even have the buy-in of the agency you're setting on fire.' Musk also found himself clashing with other Trump advisers on policy questions that could take a bite out of his personal fortune. The billionaire argued against the administration's tariff bonanza—at one point, he urged 'a zero-tariff situation' between the United States and Europe—and publicly attacked Trump's top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, calling him 'dumber than a sack of bricks.' In late March, according to a New York Times report, Musk was preparing to receive a secret briefing from the Pentagon on the country's planning for a potential war with China. After the Times story published, Trump posted on social media that Musk's trip to the Pentagon would not include any China briefing. But the report prompted a public outcry, including over Musk's many potential conflicts of interest. [Read: The actual math behind DOGE's cuts] 'You could feel it, everything changed, the fever had been broken,' the longtime Trump ally and Musk foe Steve Bannon told us in a text message about the Pentagon uproar. In Bannon's view, government officials had opted to leak to the Times rather than directly confront Musk or bring their concerns to the president—a troubling sign, he told us, of Musk's outsize power. Now Trump-administration officials wonder just what will happen to DOGE once Musk pivots elsewhere. In some cases, DOGE employees have already become more formally enmeshed in the administration, taking on official roles within government agencies. A top Musk aide is now the Interior Department's assistant secretary of policy management and budget, and a DOGE point person to the Department of Energy is now chief of staff. One administration official told us that Musk's much-vaunted—and initially chaotic—reductions in the federal workforce are now coming to fruition across the government, but in a more organized fashion. Musk's 'special government employee' status always meant that he was going to depart the government after 130 days. But for a time, there was West Wing chatter about stretching the limit of a 'working day' to allow him to extend his time in the administration. Now even Musk has stopped stoking those expectations. 'The mission of DOGE—to cut waste, fraud, and abuse—will surely continue,' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told us in an email. 'DOGE employees who onboarded at their respective agencies will continue to work with President Trump's cabinet to make our government more efficient.' Speaking to a group of reporters earlier this month, Musk implied that DOGE is self-sustaining and could carry on without him. 'DOGE is a way of life,' he told them, 'like Buddhism.' But when asked how, exactly, DOGE could continue, he was coy. 'Is Buddha needed for Buddhism?' he asked. This article originally misidentified Elon Musk as the founder of Tesla. He was an early investor in the company and is now its CEO. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk Responds to News of How He Was Humiliated
Elon Musk is having a mini-meltdown on his website after The Atlantic published a damning dive into his time at the White House, leading with a mortifying description of how he was humiliated by one of his superiors. Responding Wednesday to a tweet dissing the magazine, Musk wrote, under his newly re-adopted display name "Kekius Maximus" and accompanying AI-generated profile pic of himself as a Roman centurion: "They are the past, the legacy media fading into obscurity." Illustrating how definitely not-mad he was, Musk just kept posting through it. "The Atlantic is a zombie publication kept on life support by Laurene," Musk wrote, referring to its billionaire owner Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. "Steve would be very disappointed." Riffing with a user nicknamed "gork," who joked about Steve Jobs haunting Laurene from the grave, Musk posted a ghost emoji and a crying-laughing emoji. Later, he stamped his seal of approval — a bullseye emoji paired with a crying laughing emoji, take note — on a joke made by "gork" about The Atlantic's "ghosted" readership. (The magazine surpassed 1 million subscriptions last year. X's userbase has been in a steady decline since Musk's takeover in 2022, losing nearly one-fifth of its daily active users in the US.) So what has him so incensed? According to The Atlantic's reporting, Musk, once gleeful in his role of taking a chainsaw to the federal government, became an increasingly isolated figure in the West Wing during his time there, with fewer friends and an ever-growing list of powerful enemies. On one occasion, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent exploded at Musk for choosing the acting IRS commissioner behind Bessent's back. "Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!" Bessent shouted, loud enough for president Donald Trump to hear, and pretty much anyone else in the halls of the West Wing. Bessent soon got his way and booted Musk's pick for IRS commissioner. The Atlantic summarized the significance of the shout-matching: "The power struggle has become a symbol of Musk's inability to build support for his approach." Musk, even by his standards, has been awfully testy with the media lately. In an interview with Bloomberg News on Tuesday, he repeatedly lashed out at the interviewer Mishal Husain for asking standard questions about his businesses, including Tesla. At one point, he called Husain a "NPC" — a video game term which means "non-playable character," in an unsubtle way of saying they're a brainless idiot that doesn't think for themselves. Musk, in an NPC-like lack of self-awareness, had something to tweet about the conversation afterwards. "The interviewer was incredibly belligerent," Musk wrote. More on Elon Musk: After Leaving the Government in Ruins, Elon Musk Says He's Giving Up on Politics
