A Donald Trump administration Cabinet member is feeling heat from West Wing insiders for drawing fire from billionaire Elon Musk and creating a distraction the administration doesn’t want to have to deal with at the moment, according to reporting.
At the center of the controversy is Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who doesn’t want to relinquish his second job as NASA administrator as pressure mounts for him to step aside so an ally of Musk can be installed.
According to a report from Reese Gorman of NOTUS, Duffy is lobbying Trump to let the Transportation Department absorb NASA at the same time that Musk and a faction of Republican senators want the nominee that Duffy replaced, Jared Isaacman, to be reappointed.
NOTUS reports Duffy is “beginning to feel the pressure that his plan to fold NASA under his purview as secretary of transportation was slipping, as Isaacman was making inroads with President Donald Trump and others in the administration.”
The fact that Duffy won’t gracefully step aside has placed him on “thin ice” with some administration officials.
Gorman is reporting, “Sources said that Duffy appears to be putting his own interests ahead of the administration’s, and in doing so, rubbed people the wrong way,” with one insider complaining, “There are people in the White House who believe Duffy has made unnecessary chaos rather than just accept that his time is in the sunset.”
Pointing out that the “fragile peace” between the Trump White House and Musk has now been broken, another insider, admitted, “Everyone, and I mean everyone in the West Wing, is furious at him.”
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