A Fox News correspondent grilled Ohio’s newest Republican senator on Sunday over whether Donald Trump’s White House Tesla photo opp was an appropriate use of the presidency.
Bernie Moreno, a car dealership mogul who defeated former Senator Sherrod Brown for the latter’s seat in the 2024 election, was asked by Fox senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich on Fox News Sunday over the ethics of the president turning the White House lawn into an auto showroom promoting Tesla, which is owned by his chief adviser and DOGE executive, Elon Musk.
Moreno sidestepped the question of Musk’s obvious conflict of interest and told Heinrich he thought it was good for the president to be celebrating an American brand at a time when the Trump administration is threatening a full-scale trade war with a number of US allies, including Canada.
“He’s not the first president to do that. Most presidents have done something like that in the past,” Moreno claimed.
But Moreno was not questioned further by Heinrich about whether he thought it was acceptable for a senior aide to the president to essentially be given the national spotlight to promote his personal business interests. Instead, the interview ended with a snarky quip directed at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a frequent target of the right: “I guess we’ll have to find out if AOC still has her Tesla or not,” Heinrich joked.
The president’s second term in the White House has accelerated the sense of personal grift that permeated Washington throughout his first four years. Using the White House lawn to advertise his close adviser’s personal business is only the latest example. Trump and his family launched a “memecoin” cryptocurrency ahead of his inauguration in January, jumping aboard an online investing trend widely derided as a haven for scams and “pump-and-dump” schemes.
Musk himself has also positioned himself to cash in from Trump’s second term while simultaneously pumping millions of dollars into efforts to support Republican candidates and causes around the country through his America PAC and other related groups. At NASA, meanwhile, Musk is overseeing personnel cuts while his own SpaceX remains a major contractor for the agency. DOGE is also targeting other agencies which have brushed up against Musk’s own financial interests in the past — the SEC and NLRB among them.
Not confirmed by Congress and unofficially a part of the White House, Musk has nevertheless inserted himself into Cabinet meetings and follows the 47th president like a shadow, often appearing at Mar-a-Lago and other outings with Trump.
In some cases, his influence has overshadowed Trump’s own Cabinet secretaries and caused conflicts as agencies have differed in their responses to DOGE’s efforts, varying from outright enthusiastic acceptance to furious resistance. At one meeting, the X chief reportedly clashed with Marco Rubio, the nation’s top diplomat and head of the State Department, over DOGE’s firings — with the pair openly mocking each other in front of stunned onlookers and a bemused Trump.