A White House correspondent dished up some behind-the-scenes details leading up to president Donald Trump tossing Elon Musk overboard.
The president finally responded to his ally's criticism of the Republican budget bill Trump is pushing to get passed, saying he was “very disappointed” in Musk and claimed the tech billionaire suffered from "Trump derangement syndrome," and CNN's Kristen Holmes revealed some new reporting on what led to their apparent split.
"This is really fascinating because as of yesterday, at the exact same time, maybe a few hours later into the afternoon, I spoke to a number of Trump's top advisers who still were unsure of how he was going to respond to Elon Musk," Holmes told "Inside Politics with Dana Bash." "There were still a lot of questions. He was raising questions with them as to, 'Do you think this is just a business decision? Do you think he's lashing out at this because of his electric vehicle mandates? It's probably something he has to do now that he's leaving the government, and it's all about the business.'"
"Obviously, Donald Trump likes to make things about money and business, kind of his way of saying, 'Okay, maybe that's what he's doing here," Holmes added. "He was angry when that first tweet came out two days ago during the briefing, but then he also had a lot of questions as to where this was coming from, because he did believe that Elon knew about the EV mandate. His team does believe that this is all about business, all about the EV mandate, that this is all about him. These credits that Elon Musk believes are unfair... and it's not just that it's big and full of, it's not pork, it's not what he's saying there."
Holmes indicated the split was real, regardless of the motivation behind it.
"But I think the most telling thing about this is that clearly we've hit a new marker since then, which is, [Trump's statement] 'We had a great relationship, I don't know if we will anymore,'" Holmes said, "and I can tell you that members of Trump's team have reached out to Elon Musk – no response. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have not spoken."
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