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Elon Musk acted as hype man for President Donald Trump at his farewell news conference at the White House by urging the assembled journalists to cheer a short video clip he played at the start of the event.

The tech mogul is leaving his government perch Friday after cutting thousands of government jobs, scooping up sensitive private data on millions of Americans and alienating his Tesla customer base, but Trump started off his exit event by playing video of CNBC's Rick Santellli praising his tariffs "Squawk Box" earlier that day.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) dismissed a student's question about the Republican tax cut bill by mocking poor people.

The Wisconsin Republican spoke Thursday at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he defended the extension of president Donald Trump's tax cuts when one of the students asked why the GOP bill focused on spending cuts instead of raising revenue to balance the budget.

President Donald Trump has been "goaded" by recent mockery of his tariff agenda into harshening it, said Bharat Ramamurti, former director of the U.S. National Economic Council, in a panel discussion on MSNBC Thursday evening.

In particular, Trump was enraged by the TACO ("Trump Always Chickens Out") meme circulating to make fun of how he keeps walking back his tariff threats. He blew up at a reporter who asked him about it this week.

CNN's Harry Enten presented a data point that showed how deeply the mocking "taco" nickname had penetrated the public consciousness.

The president suffered a major loss this week in his trade war when the U.S. Court of International Trade blocked his tariffs as unauthorized, but an appeals court reinstated them while his challenge plays out.

With Donald Trump promising a press conference on Friday where he will thank billionaire Elon Musk for his work in setting up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and proceeding with the dismantling of government agencies, two MSNBC hosts suggested a set-up is in the works.

Discussing the much-hyped press availability, "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough pointed to a recent Musk interview where he claimed, "I don't want to, you know, speak out against the administration, but I don't want to, because I also don't want to take responsibility for everything the [Trump] administration is doing."

That led Scarborough to joke, "I don't understand the complicated ways of Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., but I do understand that Elon Musk is desperately trying, as sadly as he can, but as clearly as he can, to separate himself from the work that he did over the past 4 or 5 months that savaged his reputation in the business world and has hurt Tesla."

EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade

"And you can see it there. 'Oh, I'm not going to get specific but, yeah, but I don't agree with everything they're doing. Nod, nod. Wink wink," he quipped.

Co-host Jonathan Lemire predicted Trump will maneuver the press conference to make his billionaire adviser own what DOGE has done.

"What he is going to get instead of that, he's going to get a news conference in the Oval Office where Donald Trump is going to make him grab with both arms a lot of what he did in the administration," Lemire stated before adding, "That's what we're seeing here in a little bit."

He later added, "He [Musk] now sees the aftermath and the impact of what it's done on his businesses, and we've chronicled quite a bit on this show how Tesla has really taken a hit, how Musk's reputation has really taken a nosedive in a lot of quarters around the country and frankly, the planet right now, the way that his companies have suffered in Europe and other places."

"So yes, he is trying he's trying to be subtle, but he is trying his best to separate himself but that's just drawn some ire from the Trump people," he reported. "Stephen Miller went after him on Twitter this week. [House] Speaker Mike Johnson has been critical, and I suspect today we will hear President Trump really try to lash Musk to everything they've been doing in D.C. over the last couple of months."

You can watch below or at the link right here.

CNN's Kate Bolduan repeatedly expressed her astonishment at the breadth and depth of the cuts president Donald Trump made to medical research in his ongoing feud with Harvard University.

The Trump administration canceled hundreds of grants worth millions of dollars for the university's research, which a public health expert from the school told "CNN News Central" had been abruptly halted when that funding was cut off.

During a panel discussion on Elon Musk's last days of assisting Donald Trump in dismantling the government in search of putative savings, one MSNBC contributor brought up a grim report on deaths that have been attributed to the work done by the billionaire's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The panel on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" sat in stunned silence when political commentator Anand Giridharadas started ticking off the damage Musk is leaving behind as he reportedly exits politics.

President Donald Trump finally got an "off-ramp" from his deeply unpopular trade wars, said one of his former White House aides, but the sudden popularity of a mocking nickname might compel him to double down.

The president has been announcing punishing tariffs against China and other U.S. trade partners, sending markets into a tailspin and forcing him to back off, and Wall Street traders have been banking on his predictably lurching economic policy with what they call "TACO" trades – meaning "Trump Always Chickens Out" – and former White House staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin told "CNN News Central" the acronym might backfire.

A decision by Donald Trump to flip out on Truth Social and unload on a close associate of multiple Supreme Court justices will likely come back to haunt him.

That is according to Politico's Senior Legal Affairs correspondent Josh Gerstein who told the hosts on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that the president may have obliterated a great deal of SCOTUS good will he could count on when he called conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo a "sleazebag."

After Trump tariff war was put on a temporary pause on Thursday, he turned to his Truth Social account to post an extraordinarily long and vicious attack on Leo as well as the Federalist Society which is home to a wide array of conservative attorneys and judges.

On his way out of the White House door, Elon Musk criticized the so-called "big, beautiful bill" sought by president Donald Trump and passed by House Republicans, but a CNN panelist cast doubt on his sincerity.

The tech mogul told CBS "Sunday Morning" that he was "like, disappointed" in what he described as a "massive spending bill" that undermined the work of his Department of Government Efficiency, but panelists on "CNN This Morning" disagreed about Musk's intentions.

Former Trump White House attorney Ty Cobb didn’t hold back Thursday night as he ripped into not only President Donald Trump – but also his press secretary – in a stinging CNN interview.

Cobb, who once defended Trump during the Mueller investigation, took aim at the president’s defense of his sweeping tariff order in the wake of conflicting court rulings.

ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel just pilloried both President Donald Trump and conspiracy theorists in a satirical YouTube video entitled: "The Rabbit Hole with Jimmy Kimmel: Is Trump a Time Traveler?"

Assuming the persona of a conspiratorial YouTube host (even telling viewers "never trust anything you hear, unless you hear it from me") Kimmel openly wondered if Trump was hundreds of years old. He pointed to "a lot of compelling evidence" that suggests Trump "just doesn't seem like a man who fits into our modern times."