Elon Musk’s shouting match with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent might have been the final nail in the coffin for the tech billionaire’s four-month stint in the White House, but it came after months of bubbling frustration to Musk’s “chainsaw” approach to dismantling the federal government.
Musk and Bessent exploded at each other in April when Musk attempted to force through his pick to lead the Internal Revenue Service—Gary Shapley—behind Bessent’s back. (Musk eventually lost this battle—Shapley lasted less than 72 hours before Bessent tapped Michael Faulkender to replace him.)
“Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” a typically mild-mannered Bessent was heard shouting after Musk as they charged down the halls of the West Wing.
“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,” The Atlantic reported Wednesday.
But the gossip-worthy feud was just one of many that occurred between Musk and Trumpworld 2.0’s prominent members.
In March, Musk walked into what he understood to be an ambush, facing heated backlash from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Donald Trump had arranged the volatile meeting: “Bring them all in here, and we’ll have at it,” Trump said, according to The Atlantic. The advisers were frustrated with what they felt was Musk overstepping into their agencies.
Musk’s tenure wasn’t a total failure, according to former federal employees. He had managed to force out some of the federal workforce and shutter agencies (while “traumatizing the employees who remain,” The Atlantic reported). But ultimately, his Department of Government Efficiency’s Silicon Valley, hacking-and-slashing approach to reshaping the government failed to make bureaucracy more efficient. And some of his haphazardly introduced policies, such as requiring federal employees to submit weekly bullet-pointed progress reports, have quietly fallen to the wayside.
“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,” one outside Trump adviser told The Atlantic.
Another adviser was a little more blunt. “How many people were fired because they didn’t send in their three things a week or whatever the fuck it was?” the adviser said anonymously. “I think that everyone is ready to move on from this part of the administration.”
And even those still on Musk’s side now see that a different approach would have been more effective at advancing the administration’s goals.
“In retrospect,” Matt Calkins, the CEO of Appian, a Virginia-based company that provides software for the federal government, told The Atlantic, “it wasn’t nearly as much as we needed, and we probably didn’t need the chain saw. We needed the chisel.”
Musk’s unceremonious exit from government followed widespread reports that several senior Trump officials practically hated the tech billionaire, finding him abrasive, unfunny, and pompous—with some describing Musk as the “most irritating person” they’d “ever had to deal with.”
“I have been in the same room with Elon, and he always tries to be funny. And he’s not funny. Like, at all,” a senior Trump official told Rolling Stone last month. “He makes these jokes and little asides and smiles and then looks almost hurt if you don’t lap up his humor. I keep using the word ‘annoying’; a lot of people who have to deal with him do. But the word doesn’t do the situation justice. Elon just thinks he’s smarter than everyone else in the room and acts like it, even when it’s clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
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