Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent still isn’t saying whether he and Elon Musk came to blows outside the Oval Office, but he does have some thoughts on their respective fighting styles. Metaphorically speaking.
Asked if it was true that he and Musk had gotten in a shouting match outside the Oval Office and that Musk had shoved him, the former hedge fund manager acknowledged during Wednesday’s episode of Pod Force One that he and the world’s richest man had some “disagreements.”
But, he told Pod host Miranda Devine, they shared the same goal of eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in government.
“The Silicon Valley mode of operation is move quickly and break things. I always say here at Treasury we move deliberately and fix thing,” he said. “I think Elon probably fancies himself more of a Viking. I think I’m more a Ninja. Sort of the submarine surfaces, fires, goes back under.”
The Washington Post reported earlier this month that after making competing pitches to President Donald Trump about who should lead the Internal Revenue Service in a mid-April meeting, Musk and Bessent left the Oval Office and began arguing.
After hurling expletives at one another, the then-DOGE chief slammed his shoulder into Bessent’s rib cage “like a rugby player,” Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon told the paper, and bystanders had to break up the fight.
During the Pod Force One episode, Bessent didn’t confirm or deny the body slam report, saying only that everybody is “very passionate” about doing the best job they can for Trump and the American people.
It was the second time in as many weeks that he has declined to clarify what happened. When the incident came up during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing last week, Bessent deflected and took a swipe at Bannon.
He also joked that he would “take South Carolina over South Africa any day,” referring to his home state and Musk’s home country. The Tesla chief left the White House in late May. By law, he could only serve as a special government employee for 130 days.
During Wednesday’s Pod episode, Devine asked Bessent if was true he had called Musk a “total fraud.”
“Absolutely not,” Bennett replied.
When the news of the alleged brawl broke earlier this month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt conceded there had been times when Musk and the rest of Trump’s Cabinet “got frustrated with one another.”
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,” she said.
“I certainly wouldn’t describe it as a fistfight,” she told Fox News. “It was definitely a disagreement… But again, we’ve moved on from that. The president has moved on from it.”
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