GOP governor claims Elon Musk is too rich to have any conflicts of interest in government
Sununu says Trump’s ultra-wealthy Cabinet is a good thing, and denies Musk is in it for the money
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Your support makes all the difference.Elon Musk is too rich to care about making more money, a GOP governor claimed during an interview on Sunday.
Chris Sununu made the bold assertion on CNN’s State of the Union as he sat down for an interview with co-host Dana Bash. The New Hampshire Republican is one of the few holdouts in his party who remain in office without fully embracing the MAGA brand — though Sununu has been far more deferential than others like him.
The CNN host questioned Sununu during their interview about whether Musk, whose companies have won lucrative government contracts, faced a conflict of interest by serving as a close adviser to the incoming president.
He told Bash that the Twitter and Tesla chief was “so rich he's removed from the potential financial influence” of serving as an adviser to Donald Trump in the White House. Musk, along with failed Republican primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, is set to run the “Department of Government Efficiency,” likely taking the form of a presidential advisory council, with the stated purpose of making suggestions to Trump on cost-cutting measures. The position will have no direct authority, nor will Trump over the federal budget — which is written by Congress, and approved or vetoed by the president.
Sununu also lashed out at progressives and liberal Democrats for criticism of the staggering net worth of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, which the president-elect’s critics argue is indicative of an administration set to primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans and not working-class familes.
“I don’t mind that they’re billionaires; I like people that are successful,” the governor told CNN. “What’s the difference if they are a billionaire or they are broke? I’d rather have someone that is successful.”
Outgoing GOP @GovChrisSununu tells @DanaBashCNN that Americans "want a little bit of disruption" in Washington and that Elon Musk could be the "catalyst" to make that happen. pic.twitter.com/1mEZAPEYaB
— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) December 29, 2024
Musk is currently embroiled in a civil war within the Trump-aligned right. Backed by Trump himself, he and Vivek Ramaswamy are in hot water for a series of posts and other activity on social media outlining a stark divide within the conservative right over the issue of immigration and the American workforce. Musk and Ramaswamy are strong supporters of the H-1B visa program, which allows US companies to recruit high-skilled workers seeking to live in the US. That program and other similar visa programs for farmworkers and immigrant workers in other sectors of the US economy are in the sights of Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and MAGAworld’s immigration hardliners, who are pushing to end or heavily restrict those programs.
Ramaswamy, his “DOGE” co-captain, kicked off a wave of racist rhetoric against Indian-Americans and Indians generally across Twitter after making a post suggesting that US culture was a factor that companies were considering when they chose to pursue foreign-born workers.
“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy wrote in a post on X last Thursday.
His comments drew furious responses from the wing of Trumpworld centered around Bannon, whose War Room podcast is now central to the media sphere constructed to support Trump’s second administration. It also drew an angry response from Nikki Haley, Trump and Ramaswamy’s fellow 2024 Republican primary contender.
Musk wrote in his own post a day before Ramaswamy’s: the “number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.”
Then, on Friday, he came back swinging against Bannon and his other critics.
“[T]hose contemptible fools must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem,” he wrote in a post, later clarifying that he meant “those in the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists....They will absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed.”
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