Fear and Loathing in the West Wing
Inside the revolt against Elon Musk...
Welcome back to The Red Letter.
The tolerance for Elon Musk inside the White House is wearing thin, as officials scramble to contain the fallout from his calamitous interview with Larry Kudlow — when he touched the third rail of American politics: entitlements.
Trump’s staffers may be terrified of Musk, but they also know one immutable rule of Washington: if you try to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, you die politically.
“It’s no longer simmering resistance, people are fucking furious,” said a source with knowledge of the situation.
“Medicaid isn’t just for Black people in the ghetto,” said a Republican operative close to the White House. “These are our voters.”
Even before the interview, I’m told the White House communications team strongly opposed letting Musk go on Kudlow’s show, despite Kudlow being a former administration official and longtime ally. They understand that Fox News is where older, white working-class voters get their information, and this was a rare televised appearance for Musk — not the same thing as getting high with Joe Rogan.
Now they’re in cleanup mode.
Yes, the White House rushed out a “fact check” memo claiming Musk’s comments were garbled — that he was referring to “waste and fraud within entitlement spending,” not entitlements themselves. But Musk didn’t stop there. During the interview, he falsely claimed Democrats use entitlement programs to attract undocumented immigrants and add them to voter rolls. Earlier this month, he also referred to Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
You could even see Kudlow shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung denied there was any problem. “We love [Musk] doing media,” he said, pointing to Musk’s joint interview with Trump on Sean Hannity.
As promised, I want to pull back the curtain on my reporting process. After learning about the internal meltdown over Musk’s interview, I reached out to Trump’s personal pollster, John McLaughlin, to ask whether he’d tested Musk’s comments. What I learned was striking: McLaughlin hasn’t polled Musk at all — even though Musk is increasingly viewed as a political liability.
McLaughlin has been polling Trump for decades and worked alongside Tony Fabrizio during the campaign. He told me the last survey that even remotely touched on Musk was a November 2024 poll about DOGE — and Musk wasn’t mentioned by name.
“No one has asked us to do that poll,” McLaughlin told me.
Public polling paints a grim picture. A new CNN poll shows more than 53 percent of Americans view Musk unfavorably — numbers that have cratered since Trump took office. And yet Trump’s political operation, which is formidable, appears uninterested in measuring the damage.
No consultant in Washington trusts public polling, not really. Most would trust opposition polling over it. Which leaves two possibilities: either Trump’s team is afraid to confront Musk’s growing toxicity, or they’re reluctant because Musk recently donated $100 million to Trump’s political operation — which happens to be run by Trump’s other pollster, Tony Fabrizio.
When I asked Fabrizio whether he was polling Musk’s favorability, he didn’t respond.
Regardless, White House officials are under no illusions.
“Musk’s numbers are dog shit,” one source told me.
🔒 Keep reading for my exclusive reporting details how Musk treats Susie Wiles like a secretary — and why she’s taken her complaints directly to Trump.
