Donald Trump has completed 30 days of his second term as President of the United States. To mark the occasion, investment platform Saxo spoke exclusively to former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger and Trump’s former Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci to give their take on Trump’s first month.
During the interview, Saxo asked about Elon Musk’s and the President’s relationship and whether it’ll end.
Saxo: There has been a lot of speculation about the relationship between Trump and Musk – how do you foresee this relationship playing out? Has there been any talk of infighting yet and do you think it will last?
Anthony Scaramucci: “So, the Musk-Trump relationship is not sustainable. And so, they can pretend otherwise. And there’s that very famous line in Shakespeare, [the lady] doth protest too much. So they were on Sean Hannity last [Friday] night trying to impress upon people how much they like each other and how important they are to each other.”
“Now they have an economic relationship and they have a guy that can spend a hundred $200 million the way you or I could spend a £20 bill somewhere in London. So Trump is not going to jettison him. I’ve said this consistently. He’s not going to jettison him the way he would jettison somebody like me or Jim Mattis or General Kelly. But he’ll jettison him over time. He’ll fade out over time. The DPGE thing, which is interesting, is everything else that we’ve tried in that government when we try to find fraud in the government and we have $2,000 toilet seats and $10,000 hammers and things like that. It will make a little bit of a splash. It will save a little bit of money on the margin.”
“Maybe there’s 60,000 people that have taken their buyout offer and so it will shrink some of the government. The government naturally has attrition of about 200,000 people a year meaning people are retiring or they leave to go to other jobs and it goes this way.”
“So what I would say to you is that I’m not impressed yet. There’s nothing he’s done. He’s making headlines. He’s signing executive orders. They haven’t deported more people than Joe Biden did. They haven’t really done anything other than make a lot of headlines. What’s interesting about Trump this time is that he’s decided that he wants a daily reality show. And so, when he first ran and they said, “Okay, this is how a president acts,” and you put somebody in the press room to handle the press briefings, and you act presidential and do president things. He doesn’t like that. He’s very much so an attention seeker. And so in his second round of being in the presidency, he sits in the chair in the Oval Office and he’s literally having a press conference or a reality television show every day. So I guess the issue for me is when will the press get tired of that. When will the press stop running that?
“I don’t think – and Trump has told people this – Elon is going to get bored. We don’t need to worry about Elon. He’ll get sidetracked. He’ll move on to something else. Okay, Elon also said something that people should pay attention to: “ I’m going to do this for four more months.” So sometime in June, Elon’s moving back into his companies and he’s going to turn over the keys to DOGE. And so DOGE is a lot of splashing in the water. Not a lot of things are going to happen. No way they could save $2 trillion. Can they cut between $500 billion and a trillion dollars over time from that budget? They exploded that budget in COVID and they don’t need to be spending that much money, but they’ll never do it the way Elon Musk wants to do it with a chainsaw. It’s just not going to happen. Can they have more than 200,000 people leave the federal government this year, which is what their average is? Yes, they could do that as well.
“So on the margin, things could get better on the margin, but not significantly. So that’s the Musk issue.”
Adam Kinzinger: “I don’t think there’s any chance of it blowing again, but maybe I’m wrong. My crystal ball has been broken of late. I didn’t predict Donald Trump would win again, but Elon, the idea that he’s only going to do this for four months, maybe he takes some step back? Remember, he once put up a poll and said, “Should I step down as CEO of Twitter?” Overwhelmingly, the response was yes and he still is doing his thing. So, I don’t know.
“But there is no way he’s going to take his hands out of government. Because, if you’re rich, what’s the one thing you don’t have that you want? Power. If you have power, what’s the one thing you want that you don’t have? Money.
“It’s like the rich always seek power. The powerful always seek money, and that’s what DOGE is.Elon Musk, he’s one of these guys with a broken brain that is constantly trying to fill some hole.
“This is the idea and by the way, this fake department DOGE, it’s not even real. The fact that he can go in there and save government all by himself. How much of an arrogant person are you? How high do you have to think of yourself? How high do you have to be to believe that you can fix government all yourself? So, how does this end? It’s not likely, but it’s possible that Donald Trump needs Elon so much that he tries to maintain that relationship.
“That would be counter to every relationship Donald Trump has ever had where, if you outshine him, if you come out from under his shadow, you’re a threat. And I do think that’s going to be what ultimately happens here. Maybe they don’t blow up in some rainbow explosion or whatever. But it may happen where they fall apart because Donald Trump doesn’t like to be overshadowed. And just a few weeks ago, this picture of Donald Trump sitting at a desk apparently looking subservient to Elon Musk, that’s going to grate on Donald Trump for a very long time. If we leaped forward two years from now and looked at the lay of the land, I don’t think we’d see Elon and Trump very close.”
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