The hidden feud behind Musk and Bessent’s White House shouting match
The tensions simmered for months. Then they exploded in the Oval Office as President Trump watched.
is an open secret around the White House that many in the Trump administration are desperate to see the back of Elon Musk.
While the president himself still holds great affection for the world’s richest man, who bankrolled his election victory in November, many in the cabinet have wearied of the mercurial tech billionaire.
A row last week between Musk and Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, in which the two men went “chest to chest” in an expletive-ridden shouting match outside the Oval Office, is only the latest in a string of confrontations between the Tesla boss and senior Trump officials.
Trump himself witnessed the clash, as a power struggle between the two men spilt into what one source compared to a bout from “WWE” - World Wrestling Entertainment.
“Elon was shouting and rambling and Scott just wasn’t putting up with it,” a source told Axios. “They were not physical in the Oval [Office], but the president saw it, and then they carried it down the hall, and that’s when they did it again.”
The fight became so heated that the normally mild-mannered Bessent was said to have shouted “f*** you” at his rival. “Say it louder,” Musk replied.
The two men have previous. Musk opposed Bessent’s appointment as Treasury secretary from the outset, dismissing the hedge fund manager as a “business-as-usual” choice the likes of which were “driving America bankrupt”.
Musk lobbied for Howard Lutnick to get the post instead. Trump overruled him, appointing Bessent to lead the Treasury and naming Lutnick commerce secretary, but the tension has simmered since. One ally of Bessent admitted “Scott can’t stand” Musk, adding: “That goes pretty deep and pretty far back. But he’s acting like a grown-up about it.”
Frustration has mounted as Musk has set about dismantling the federal bureaucracy as head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). Musk’s wrecking-ball approach and his erratic tirades on social media have triggered a backlash among senior officials attempting to enact more strategic reform.
“Bessent has two mandates: reform and stabilise,” one insider told the New York Post. “Elon has one mandate: break things in the process of reform.”
Some fear that the tech mogul is a liability for the administration. Musk opposed Trump’s flagship tariff policy, attacking the president’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, as a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks”.
His sweeping cuts at the helm of Doge have led to a few embarrassing about-turns. Key scientists and pandemic experts responsible for the administration’s response to bird flu and protecting America’s nuclear arsenal were fired and then rehired. Funding for ebola prevention was cancelled and then restored.
“There is certainly a growing group of people who are like, ‘OK, when are we actually going to get to the business of government, rather than the business of Elon Musk?’ ” one source close to the White House told The Times earlier this month.
The friction between Musk and Bessent is said to have come to a head over who should lead the Internal Revenue Service. Bessent is reported to have complained to Trump after Musk went behind his back to install Gary Shapley as its acting commissioner. Trump then agreed to replace Shapley with Michael Faulkender, a deputy of Bessent’s at the Treasury department.
Musk has already announced plans to step back from government to refocus on his business empire: his work with Doge has led to a global boycott of Tesla and a collapse in the company’s share price. True to form, however, he shows no sign of backing down from his row with Bessent.
After the Maga conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer criticised the Treasury secretary’s friendship with the “Trump hater” entrepreneur John Hope Bryant on Wednesday, Musk joined her criticism by saying: “People can mask their true character, but not the character of their friends.”
The White House has attempted to gloss over the Musk-Bessent clash as “healthy debate”. Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, said: “Disagreements are normal ... ultimately everyone knows they serve at the pleasure of President Trump.”
Privately, however, some Republicans admit that Musk’s wealth and his platform as owner of X have put the party in a bind. “There’s no controlling Elon,” one former associate of the billionaire told The Times. “The very idea that any sort of process or institution is going to contain him is absurd.”
The Times
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