The Musk Oval meeting you haven’t read about

Feb 25, 2025

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By Adam Wren, Sophia Cai, Ben Johansen and Irie Sentner

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Welcome to POLITICO's West Wing Playbook: Remaking Government, your guide to Donald Trump’s unprecedented overhaul of the federal government — the key decisions, the critical characters and the power dynamics that are upending Washington and beyond.

HAPPENING NOW: In the latest sign that ELON MUSK is the most special of special government employees, White House press secretary KAROLINE LEAVITT announced today that he would attend tomorrow’s Cabinet meeting.

Musk inserted himself in Speaker MIKE JOHNSON’s efforts to pass a budget resolution with loads of administration spending priorities, potentially gumming up President DONALD TRUMP’s sweeping domestic policy agenda.

When one of the GOP holdouts on Johnson’s resolution, Rep. THOMAS MASSIE of Kentucky, posted to X Monday night that “if the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better,” Musk replied: “That sounds bad.”

It’s likely to be a topic of discussion as House Republicans are meeting with Trump at the White House — just as this is arriving in your inbox.

FINALLY, AN ANSWER: After weeks of questions about who is formally leading DOGE, a White House official granted anonymity to speak openly confirmed to West Wing Playbook that AMY GLEASON, who served as a digital services expert at U.S. Digital Service during Trump’s first term, will serve as acting administrator. Gleason most recently served as chief product officer at Russell Street Ventures, a health care firm in Nashville.

The White House has long argued the head of DOGE is not Musk. During a hearing in Washington on Monday, Justice Department lawyers could not answer questions about who was in this role, when asked by Judge COLLEEN KOLLAR-KOTELLY. BRADLEY HUMPHREYS, the government’s attorney, had no answer for her.

BACK TO DON AND ELON’S MEET-CUTE: Musk has been a consistent presence in the Oval Office during the first month of Trump’s second term.

But even as Musk held court in the Oval earlier this month, clad in his black Make America Great Again cap, it was not his first time there.

And the tenor of that very first meeting — five years ago nearly to the day — did not at all match the bro-y bonhomie that Fox News’ SEAN HANNITY captured in his primetime sitdown with the two men last week.

Here are the details, according to a person in the meeting, reported here for the first time:

Shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic began in the United States in 2020, Musk traveled to Washington to meet with Trump about building a Tesla gigafactory in Mexico instead of Texas — a plan Trump had caught wind of and had invited Musk to the West Wing to discuss.

Before the meeting, Musk and an associate met with Trump’s son-in-law, JARED KUSHNER, and then were hosted by TIM PATAKI, who served as assistant to the president and the deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison. A person who was within earshot of Musk — who West Wing Playbook granted anonymity to describe a private conversation — later recounted that Musk called Trump “a fucking moron” behind his back while in the White House.

“We walk into the Oval, and he kind of looks around, and he's looking around,” this person in the room said. “He's like, ‘Gosh, I tell you. I mean, I was just in China and man, their palaces just make the White House kind of look more like an outhouse.’”

Trump, this person said, silently fumed, as National Economic Council Director LARRY KUDLOW and four of his staffers stood by silently. (Kudlow did not return a request for comment.)

In the meeting, Trump claimed to own two Teslas in his car collection. But there was a problem suggesting the president was not fully familiar with how the cars work: When Tesla’s supercharging network came up, Trump seemed perplexed, as Musk and a colleague explained the technology.

But the two did find common ground on at least one topic. With the pandemic bearing down on the world, this person in the meeting said, “they talked a little about Covid, and both of them were equally dismissive of Covid and just how it was basically the flu, and people are freaking out for no reason, and all that stuff.”

A White House spokesperson did not return a POLITICO request for comment — and an email to X’s press contact went unanswered.

Musk, it's easy to forget, served on three Trump advisory councils in 2017: the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative, the Strategic and Policy Forum, and a business advisory group focused on infrastructure. And the relationship wasn’t easy.

When Trump announced he would pull out of the Paris Climate Accords on June 1, 2017, Musk had had enough. "Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world," he tweeted.

Later, in 2022, Trump went after Musk and provided photo evidence of the Oval meeting: “When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, 'drop to your knees and beg,' and he would have done it…”

Musk had embarked on a deal to buy Twitter, and Trump seemed upset over Musk saying he was too old to run for president again. “Elon never told me he only voted for Democrats. In fact, he told me he voted for ‘Trump’, and would do so again. Now he’s going to pay a big price for signing a bad contract for a bad company,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

That Musk later became Trump’s biggest financial backer — giving $288 million to his 2024 presidential bid — and then one of his closest advisers, is the latest example of how both men make decisions and build relationships based on a real politik calculus. And how both see themselves as engaging in a transactional relationship.

MESSAGE US — West Wing Playbook is obsessively covering the Trump administration’s reshaping of the federal government. Are you a federal worker? A DOGE staffer? Have you picked up on any upcoming DOGE moves? We want to hear from you on how this is playing out. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com.

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POTUS PUZZLER

Which president’s State of the Union address was the first to be televised?

(Answer at bottom.)

Knives Out

OUTTA HERE: Twenty-one civil service employees resigned from DOGE today, declaring in a letter to White House chief of staff SUSIE WILES that “we will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.”

The employees, housed within the U.S. Digital Service — renamed the U.S. DOGE Service once Musk took over — stated in the letter obtained by POLITICO that “we swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations. However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments at the United States DOGE Service,” our KATHERINE LONG reports.

DEMS SEE AN OPENING: Democrats say that Musk’s sweeping government cuts are awakening an opposition to Trump — and they’re hoping it will motivate a slew of new down-ballot candidates to run in the years ahead, our ELENA SCHNEIDER reports.

Early interest in running for office is already on the rise: At least one major candidate recruitment organization, Run for Something, saw a sharp spike of more than 2,000 new applications pour in as Musk issued major actions pushing federal workers out.

The Oval

MAJOR POOL SHAKEUP: The White House Correspondents’ Association will “no longer have a monopoly” on determining the press pool, Leavitt announced in the briefing room today. Instead, the White House press team will decide which outlets have access to the president as part of a pool allowed into the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One and into other otherwise closed meetings and events, our ELI STOKOLS reports.

The announcement comes after a legal victory allowing the administration to ban the Associated Press from White House events.

WHCA President EUGENE DANIELS, who is chief Playbook correspondent at POLITICO, said in a statement following the announcement, “This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States. It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”

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Musk Radar

A MILLI: More than a million federal employees responded to last weekend’s controversial email — which Musk amplified in a threatening X post — demanding a list of five things they did on the job last week, Eli and DANIEL LIPPMAN report. That amounts to roughly a third of the federal workforce.

The White House, eager to present the email demand as part of its coordinated attempt to dramatically scale down the size of the federal government, made the announcement at today's press briefing.

“All federal workers should be working at the same pace as President Trump is working and moving,” Leavitt said. “This is to ensure that federal workers are not ripping off American taxpayers, that they are showing up to the office and that they are doing their jobs. And it’s a very simple task to complete.”

In the Courts

GET ON WITH IT: A federal judge expressed frustration today that the Trump administration appears to be ignoring his two-week-old order to unfreeze billions of dollars for foreign assistance grants and contracts, prompting him to set a short deadline for the State Department to begin paying out funds, our KYLE CHENEY and JOSH GERSTEIN report.

During a telephone hearing, U.S. District Judge AMIR ALI grew impatient with the lack of clear responses from the administration’s lawyers to claims from aid contractors that they have seen no payments from the State Department or USAID since Ali issued an emergency order two weeks ago halting a broad freeze on aid-related programs.

“I don’t know why I can’t get a straight answer from you,” the judge lamented to a Justice Department attorney.

WHO'S IN, WHO'S OUT

THE BLEED AT USAID: The Trump administration has placed 4,080 USAID staffers on paid administrative leave as of Sunday night, our CARMEN PAUN reports for Pro subscribers. “Concurrently, USAID has initiated a reduction-in-force that will affect 1,608 employees across the foreign and civil service subject to Congressional notification,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.

That number adds to the thousands of contractors working for USAID who were laid off in late January as a result of the administration’s blanket freeze on foreign aid.

Agenda Setting

STAYIN’ ALIVE: The Trump administration intends to keep the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau operating, although in a more streamlined form, our KATY O’DONNELL reports. “The predicate to running a ‘more streamlined and efficient’ bureau’ is that there will continue to be CFPB,” consumer bureau Acting Director RUSS VOUGHT said in a motion filed late Monday in federal court in Washington. The headquarters are shuttered and probationary employees have already been culled, sparking concerns that the bureau would be shut down.

Vought and DOGE advisers embedded within the agency, in early February, directed staff to stand down from all work. The motion was filed in response to the CFPB union, which sued the Trump administration earlier this month over what it said were plans to “dismantle” the agency after Vought ordered staff to stop working.

YOU’RE MISTAKEN, MR. MUSK: Lawmakers and officials from Western states are warning that Trump and Musk’s firings and funding freezes will leave the region woefully unprepared for coming wildfire season, just two months after blazes devastated Los Angeles, our NATALIE FERTIG and JORDAN WOLMAN report for Pro subscribers.

The Trump administration’s moves to terminate nearly 10 percent of Forest Service personnel and pause grants intended to reduce the risk and intensity of fires have left states scrambling to make sure they don’t lose valuable preparation time. The uncertainty is coming during a period when the Forest Service and state governments would normally be doing crucial work such as creating fire breaks, carrying out controlled burns, thinning trees and clearing brush.

What We're Reading

Trump allies circulate mass deportation plan calling for ‘processing camps’ and a private citizen ‘army’ (POLITICO’s Dasha Burns and Myah Ward)

‘It’s a Psyop’: Inside Elon Musk’s Empty Ultimatum (The Atlantic’s Isaac Stanley-Becker and Jonathan Lemire)

DOGE Quietly Deletes the 5 Biggest Spending Cuts It Celebrated Last Week (NYT’s David A. Fahrenthold, Aatish Bhatia, Margot Sanger-Katz, Emily Badger, Ethan Singer and Josh Katz)

Fired Yosemite workers say upside-down U.S. flag was a call to protect public lands (NBC News’ Alicia Victoria Lozano)

POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER

In 1947, HARRY TRUMAN’s SOTU speech was the first to be shown on television, according to the House of Representatives archive. We’re a week away from Trump’s first address to Congress for this term. (Head to POLITICO.com Tuesday night to see his live remarks along with full coverage of the speech.)

A CALL OUT! Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents, with a citation or sourcing, and we may feature it!

Edited by Noah Bierman, Jennifer Haberkorn and Kaitlyn Locke.

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Did you know that about 90% of our smartphone data travels over WiFi, not cellular? WiFi carries 10 times the amount of data of all cellular networks combined, including 5G.

Comcast runs the nation's largest WiFi network, connecting over a billion devices each year. WiFi operates over unlicensed spectrum, fostering innovation and competition by giving millions of consumers and businesses access to essential, affordable wireless connectivity. Learn more about how Comcast continues to innovate to maximize our superior broadband network and the unlicensed spectrum.