A CNN host challenged a longtime Donald Trump ally to explain why the president was gambling his second term on the increasingly unpopular Elon Musk.
The tech mogul essentially bought his way into a prominent perch in the administration by pouring at least $277 million to Trump's re-election campaign, and he's used that influence to establish the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and slash federal agencies and cast thousands of government workers out of their
"I think it's pretty clear that the person who has played the largest role in shaping the president's first days in office has been Elon Musk, especially when it comes to reshaping the federal government," said Audie Cornish, host of "CNN This Morning." "People have questioned that work, they've even questioned sort of his proof, what he calls his wall of receipts. For example, New York Times fact-checking about what's happening with DOGE and its team when it comes to sort of the accountability. So for you, is that another thing that the White House needs to talk about, what the DOGE team has actually accomplished in a way that the American public can understand?"
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Jason Miller, who has been a longtime spokesman for Trump, argued that the media had misrepresented what Musk has done and claimed the foreign-born billionaire had broad public support.
"I think there's a big disconnect between what we see and what we hear in the media and what the rest of the country is actually thinking at the moment," Miller said. "In fact, polling out yesterday in the Daily Mail and JL Partners actually shows that president Trump has his highest favorability rating that he's ever had, and the reason being is he's taking this wasteful spending head on. A lot of people remember that when inflation started under Joe Biden, it was because of the wasteful spending we had, those two bills were pumping money into the economy that, quite frankly, just didn't exist."
Cornish broke in to redirect him and point out that Musk was far less popular than the president.
"I just want to bring it back to the idea, Elon Musk has a lower rating than the president," Cornish said, "and over time, is that going to be a gamble to have that relationship so close?"
Miller insisted that wasn't a problem for Trump.
"Not at all, because what president Trump is doing is he is authorizing his administration to tackle inflation head on," Miller said, "and we have to do this. I mean, we're running in nearly $2 trillion deficit every single year. The national debt is up over $36 trillion, approaching $37 trillion. If we don't take action on this, inflation is going to continue. We're going to move toward insolvency, financially, as a country. We have to go and take this on. People are so frustrated when they hear that certain folks in Washington, for example, they don't even have to show up to work anymore. Well, that's all changing under president Trump. He's making workers get back to the office if they have a nonessential job, if they're not actually contributing, or if they don't exist, or if they're not showing up, then guess what? We're going to get rid of them and we're going to go, and then clearly we don't need those jobs."
"The American public, people who wake up every day, who are watching this show right now, getting ready to go spend eight or nine or 10 hours work and provide for their families, are sick and tired of what they see coming out of Washington," Miller added. "They want the reckless spending stopped, they want the economy fixed, they see the border being secured. Now we're going to get some other great things done, as well."
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