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Elon Musk is simply too wealthy to care about making extra money, a GOP governor claimed throughout an interview on Sunday.
Chris Sununu made the daring assertion on CNN’s State of the Union as he sat down for an interview with co-host Dana Bash. The New Hampshire Republican is among the few holdouts in his occasion who stay in workplace with out absolutely embracing the MAGA model — although Sununu has been much more deferential than others like him.
The CNN host questioned Sununu throughout their interview about whether or not Musk, whose corporations have received profitable authorities contracts, confronted a battle of curiosity by serving as a detailed adviser to the incoming president.
He informed Bash that the Twitter and Tesla chief was “so rich he’s removed from the potential financial influence” of serving as an adviser to Donald Trump within the White Home. Musk, together with failed Republican main candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, is ready to run the “Department of Government Efficiency,” possible taking the type of a presidential advisory council, with the said goal of creating solutions to Trump on cost-cutting measures. The place may have no direct authority, nor will Trump over the federal price range — which is written by Congress, and permitted or vetoed by the president.
Sununu additionally lashed out at progressives and liberal Democrats for criticism of the staggering web price of Trump’s incoming Cupboard, which the president-elect’s critics argue is indicative of an administration set to primarily profit the wealthiest People and never working-class familes.
“I don’t mind that they’re billionaires; I like people that are successful,” the governor informed CNN. “What’s the difference if they are a billionaire or they are broke? I’d rather have someone that is successful.”
Musk is at present embroiled in a civil battle inside the Trump-aligned proper. Backed by Trump himself, he and Vivek Ramaswamy are in sizzling water for a sequence of posts and different exercise on social media outlining a stark divide inside the conservative proper over the problem of immigration and the American workforce. Musk and Ramaswamy are sturdy supporters of the H-1B visa program, which permits US corporations to recruit high-skilled employees searching for to dwell within the US. That program and different comparable visa applications for farmworkers and immigrant employees in different sectors of the US financial system are within the sights of Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and MAGAworld’s immigration hardliners, who’re pushing to finish or closely prohibit these applications.
Ramaswamy, his “DOGE” co-captain, kicked off a wave of racist rhetoric towards Indian-People and Indians typically throughout Twitter after making a submit suggesting that US tradition was an element that corporations had been contemplating after they selected to pursue foreign-born employees.
“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy wrote in a submit on X final Thursday.
His feedback drew livid responses from the wing of Trumpworld centered round Bannon, whose Battle Room podcast is now central to the media sphere constructed to help Trump’s second administration. It additionally drew an indignant response from Nikki Haley, Trump and Ramaswamy’s fellow 2024 Republican main contender.
Musk wrote in his personal submit a day earlier than Ramaswamy’s: the “number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.”
Then, on Friday, he got here again swinging towards Bannon and his different critics.
“[T]hose contemptible fools must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem,” he wrote in a submit, later clarifying that he meant “those in the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists….They will absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed.”
