A debate over the IRS commissioner turned into a shouting match between tech billionaire Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a Wednesday report said.
Last Thursday, President Donald Trump ousted his acting IRS commissioner after just a few days in the role as a "power struggle" unfolded, The New York Times reported. At issue was that Musk hired someone to run the IRS, not Bessent, who oversees the post.
Axios provided additional information to the report on Wednesday, stating that the debate over who would work under Bessent became heated and within earshot of the president.
"It was two billionaire, middle-aged men thinking it was WWE in the hall of the West Wing," Axios said, quoting one witness on the argument.
Axios went so far as to characterize it as a "chest-to-chest clash."
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"They were not physical in the Oval, but the president saw it, and then they carried it down the hall, and that's when they did it again," the witness said, according to the report.
Another witness said, "It was quite a scene. It was loud. And I mean, loud."
Bessent isn't the only Cabinet official who has clashed with Musk.
Hired as a "special government employee," Musk was tasked with making drastic cuts to government staff and funding as part of an effort to eliminate what he called "waste, fraud and abuse."
Trump established the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, through an executive order. The effort has dealt with several accidental cleanings of departments, including the Department of Energy, where nuclear workers were fired, and there was a fear that their absence could jeopardize national security, the BBC reported at the time.
Musk clashed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio when Musk accused him of firing "nobody" from the State Department, the New York Times reported in March.
According to MSNBC host and former Wall Street executive Stephanie Ruhle, Bessent is reportedly looking to move on from his current job slightly more than two months after being sworn in.
"My sources say that Scott Bessent is kind of the odd man out here and, in the inner circle that Trump has, he's not even close to Scott Bessent or listening to him," she told host "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough in early April. "Some have said to me, he's looking for an exit door to try to get himself to the Fed, because in the last few days he's really hurting his own credibility and history in the markets."