Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, publicly at least, are on good terms.
Yet when it comes to the staff in and around the new administration, it’s a different story. Just two-and-a-half weeks into Trump’s second term in office, a fissure has begun to emerge following Musk’s DOGE takeover of the US government, according to a half-dozen Trump loyalist Republican aides and advisers inside and around the administration who spoke with WIRED.
“I think it’s more the staff who have an issue with Elon than President Trump,” a Republican aide familiar with the discussions around DOGE and the administration tells WIRED. This staffer, like others, requested anonymity to relay sensitive conversations due to fears of retaliation.
In the space of a couple of weeks, Elon Musk and his associates have taken control of multiple government agencies and a cadre of young and inexperienced engineers with ties to Musk have been given access to some of the most highly sensitive federal systems through DOGE. As Musk’s associates tore through the federal apparatus over the first weekend of February, a ride-or-die MAGA Republican operative who knows President Trump personally confided something to WIRED they never thought they’d find themselves saying before the past two weeks.
“There could be a collision course coming here at some point,” they said when asked if there’s a brewing freakout over Musk in Trumpworld. “He’s getting too big for his britches.”
The motivations of the people WIRED has spoken with cover a wide range. Some Trump campaign veterans hope White House chief of staff Susie Wiles will intervene, while other Republican operatives think the emerging rift is a problem despite having no personal animosity toward Musk. Others stand to gain personally or professionally from a Musk ouster.
Beyond increasing frustration over Musk causing headaches for the administration—which many of these Republicans consider to be more optics issues than full-blown policy disasters—the Republicans who spoke to WIRED had little to no idea what the proper chain of communication is supposed to be between agencies and the White House.
On Tuesday, Trump went on Fox News to declare that the new DOGE staffers were actually working in the White House, even though he said he hasn’t seen them. Minutes prior, a senior White House official told WIRED that “DOGE is part of the White House” now. (Confusingly, Trump established DOGE by repurposing the existing US Digital Service as the US DOGE Service, an agency under the Office of Management and Budget, via executive order.)
The Trump White House official said DOGE checks in with them “every day.” Yet when asked about the nature of these briefings and if they could offer any specifics as to whether they take place on a schedule or with early morning priority, a common practice for those tasked with liaising between agencies and the White House, they had none.
The DOGE briefings are “as needed,” the senior White House official said.
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