New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on Wednesday said President Donald Trump isn’t “eager to shove” Elon Musk out of his circle despite how some of the president’s officials feel about the billionaire.
“I do think there are a number of Trump advisers who are tired of Musk’s presence,” Haberman said in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “And I think that is going to continue as long as Musk is there.”
Sources told The New York Times that Trump doesn’t intend to cut ties with Musk, whose groups donated millions to a conservative candidate that lost in the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race on Tuesday, after the billionaire says goodbye to his role in the government.
Musk has reportedly alienated Trump’s advisers, who are pleased to make the billionaire a scapegoat for the president following the Wisconsin defeat.
Haberman told Collins that Trump would prefer more “precise” cuts from Musk as opposed to his chainsaw-like vision for cuts, noting that he still sees “advantages” in having the billionaire around.
Trump told reporters earlier this week that Musk — whose intense push to cut costs with his so-called Department of Government Efficiency has fueled fierce backlash — would leave the government “at some point” to return to his companies, adding that he’d “keep him as long as I could keep him.”
In January, Trump made the world’s richest man a “special government employee,” a designation that limits those with the title to work no more than 130 days in a year. If the day count began at the start of Trump’s second term, Musk’s government title would cease at the end of next month.
Musk, in a Fox News appearance last week, appeared to tease that his time in the government was coming to a close.
“I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time frame,” he said.
Haberman, after Collins noted that Musk once told Trump he was looking at about six months of government work, said there isn’t a “huge difference” between 130 days and half a year.
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“But I think that, look, Trump is certainly aware that this has been a turbulent period,” she said of the president. “I don’t think that he wants to spend the entirety of the next year and a half leading into what is likely to be a challenging midterm cycle debating questions about Elon Musk’s approach to shrinking the government.”