POLITICO's chief DC correspondent broke this news on Wednesday:
Bade said she had connected with a "senior administration official" who had told her this was definitely happening and it totally wasn't fake news:
OF NOTE: Senior administration official said Musk is likely to retain an informal role as an adviser & continue to be an occasional face around the White House grounds. Another cautioned that anyone who thinks Musk is going to disappear entirely from Trump's orbit is 'fooling themselves.'
Notice the language here: "a shift in the Trump-Musk relationship"
BUT BUT BUT... The news represents a shift in the Trump-Musk relationship from a month ago, when White House officials & allies were predicting Musk was 'here to stay' and that Trump would find a way to blow past the 130-day time limit.
And about five seconds later the White House shot down the report:
Here's the thing: Per the original agreement, Elon was coming onboard as a contract employee to help the president eliminate government waste. The length of that service was prescheduled for 130 days, or the end of May 2025.
So why would Politico report a "scoop" in early April that Elon will be "stepping back" from his role in the coming weeks? How is that even news?
Unless...
So, did Politico spin a nothingburger story to make it seem like there was some kind of rift forming between Trump and Musk?
Was all this just a drama pitch to the kind of low-information readers who liked to spread gossip in high school?
Decide for yourself. See how they pitch supposed division in Trump's house:
The transition, the insiders said, is likely to correspond to the end of Musk's time as a 'special government employee,' a special status that temporarily exempts him from some ethics and conflict-of-interest rules. That 130-day period is expected to expire in late May or early June.
Musk's defenders inside the administration believe that the time will soon be right for a transition, given their view that there's only so much more he can cut from government agencies without shaving too close to the bone.
I'm not sure what's more ridiculous, the implied suggestion that Elon has "defenders" that are looking to bend the rules to allow him to stay so he can achieve unlimited power...
...or that there's "only so much more" that DOGE can cut from the multi-trillion-dollar bloat of the federal swamp!
All of it is par for the course for the fake news.
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