Billionaire Elon Musk’s overthrow of the US Treasury — a move many insiders believe to be illegal — by his so-called Department of Government Efficiency has even some of president Donald Trump’s loyalists uneasy.
The ultra-public rampage, Wired reports, is sowing discord between Republican aides and Musk’s army of strikingly young men, some still in college, who are currently making astonishingly deep changes to the federal government’s payments system without clearance.
“I think it’s more the staff who have an issue with Elon than President Trump,” one Republican aide told the publication.
“There could be a collision course coming here at some point,” the staffer added, pointing out that some believe Musk is “getting too big for his breeches.”
According to Wired’s reporting, there’s growing concern that the blinding number of policy decisions are being made at such a breakneck pace that even the president’s office isn’t capable of keeping track — an unease that highlights just how chaotic and destructive the first two weeks of Trump’s tenure have been.
Many have also pointed out that Musk and Trump’s on-and-off-again relationship could be greatly strained by having the former actively pull the purse strings and assume control — actions that could directly undermine the agency of the president himself.
Trump also appears to be fairly clueless about what it is DOGE is actually doing. The president told Fox News on Tuesday that he had no idea where DOGE staffers were working, despite getting office space inside the White House itself, as flagged by Wired.
Nonetheless, a source close to Trump told the publication that the president is “entirely enthusiastic about [Musk’s] efforts, and they are working together very closely.”
Intriguingly, Trump directly addressed the subject of playing second fiddle to Musk, telling reporters that the billionaire “can’t do and won’t do” anything “without our approval.”
Where all of this drama leaves the role of Trumpworld figures who have been subjugated to watching the chaos unfurl remains to be seen. The GOP Congress appears to have little interest in stepping in to restrain Musk, as Semafor reports, suggesting they’re too afraid to get caught up in the crossfire.
However, some lawmakers argue Republicans are still paying attention.
“I can see things where Musk — he’s coming up with good ideas — he could go too far,” North Carolina Republican senator Thom Tillis told Semafor. “We could say, ‘Great idea. It doesn’t work in a public institution.'”
But given DOGE’s indiscriminate dismantling of institutions including USAID, Republicans clearly have yet to reach such a point.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) told Semafor that Republicans are “afraid to say” that undercutting USAID is a terrible idea, saying they’re “afraid of retribution.”
If there’s one certainty, it’s that the playbook has long been thrown out — along, according to some observers, with certain strictures of the US Constitution.
More on DOGE: Elon Musk Says DOGE Will Now Shut Down Government Payments He Doesn’t Like