President Donald Trump washed his hands of one of his most controversial policies and blamed it on lower-ranking officials.

The president sat down for an extended interview with The Atlantic's Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, who wrote that he seemed to acknowledge that his executive powers have limits, even as he continually seeks to expand them, and they added that Trump seemed to understand the Constitution would not allow him to disregard a judicial order.

“I think the judge is horrible,” Trump said, referring to U.S. District judge James Boasberg.

That federal judge has tried to stop the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants to an El Salvador prison under the Alien Enemies Act, but Trump cited a controversial Supreme Court granting him immunity from criminal prosecution for anything he does as part of his “official” duties as president.

"I’ve had a lot of horrible judges, and I won on appeal, right?" Trump said. "I got immunity on appeal."

The reporters questioned him on the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran national who had been living legally in the U.S. before he was mistakenly deported, but the government's own admission, to the notorious CECOT prison, and Trump denied any responsibility for his case or others like it.

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“You know, I’m not involved in that," Trump said. "I have many people, many layers of people that do that. I would say they are all extremely tough, dangerous people. I would say that, and, don’t forget, they came in the country illegally.”

The government has argued that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, which his attorneys and family deny, and he was never granted due process for an opportunity to challenge the allegation, but Trump's advisers argue that his approach is working – even if the public doesn't seem to agree.

“Think about everything that’s happened immediately on immigration,” said Cliff Sims, who has served as an aide in both Trump administration. “Oh, we’re just going to ship gang members to a prison in El Salvador? ‘Sure.’ We’re going to send [border czar] Tom Homan to kick down the door of every criminal illegally in the country? ‘Have at it.’ It is the ultimate example of the ruthless efficiency of Trump 2.0.”

Donald Trump's former lawyer argued that Elon Musk would be a major liability for his agenda moving forward.

The tech billionaire bought himself a prominent perch in the president's second administration by contributing more than $277 million to his 2024 re-election campaign, but former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen wrote on his Substack page that Musk would present a major political problem for Republicans.

"It takes a special kind of arrogance, bordering on megalomania, to look at a former astronaut, Navy captain, and combat veteran who nearly lost his wife to an assassination attempt and call him a traitor," Cohen wrote. "But that’s exactly what Elon Musk did to Senator Mark Kelly after the Arizona Democrat voiced his unwavering support for Ukraine. And in doing so, Musk just handed Donald Trump and the GOP another ticking time bomb set to detonate right in their laps."

The South Africa-born Musk fancies himself a kingmaker in the Republican Party, Cohen wrote, but he has torched his credibility with veterans by cutting more than 80,000 jobs at the Veterans Administration and alienated others by attacking Kelly, who flew combat missions in Operation Desert Storm and served as a NASA astronaut.

"By attacking a decorated veteran, he’s driving even more of them away from the GOP; a party that still desperately needs their votes," Cohen wrote. "For Trump, this is disastrous. Veterans are still pissed with him, thanks to his documented history of calling them 'suckers' and 'losers,' disrespecting Senator John McCain by refusing to acknowledge him as a war hero, and botching policies meant to support them. Musk’s latest meltdown isn’t going to help. Veterans aren’t going to look at Musk’s unhinged ranting against Mark Kelly and think, 'Yeah, this guy speaks for me.' They’re going to see yet another wealthy, out-of-touch billionaire attacking one of their own; and by extension, themselves."

Cohen wrote that Republicans faced a long-term electoral crisis in the making as independents shift left and suburban voters turn against MAGA policies, and he said Musk's attacks on veterans presented another obstacle to retaining their congressional majorities in next year's midterms.

"The GOP’s continued obsession with Musk isn’t just bad politics; it’s electoral suicide," Cohen wrote. "They have hitched their wagon to a man who not only has no loyalty to their party but also thrives on controversy, chaos, and alienating crucial voting blocs. It’s a disaster in the making, and the worst part? They know it. They just don’t have the spine to do anything about it."

"Elon Musk may think he’s the future of American politics," Cohen added Wednesday. "But if he keeps this up, he’s going to make sure the GOP doesn’t have one."

George Conway predicted that Donald Trump would engage in a constitutional showdown that could spell the end of U.S. democracy.

Vice President J.D. Vance argued Sunday that federal courts “aren’t allowed” to limit the president's “legitimate power," after a judge temporarily blocked Elon Musk and other political appointees from accessing sensitive data and payment systems at the Treasury Department. Conway told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" the issue would likely force a constitutional clash.

"J.D. Vance is an embarrassment to the law school that I attended," Conway said. "But the fact of the matter is, he's telling us something that we should have already known, and last week I said it. They are not going to obey court orders, they have decided that they are going to push the boundaries on executive power by basically infringing on the Article 1 power of Congress, and they are violating statutory, they're violating the text of the Constitution in the birthright citizenship issue.

"They are violating the text of statutes by having DOGE run around and do all the things that they've been doing, the executive orders, there's no reason that this government that has decided not to obey the laws and the Constitution of the United States is going to obey a court order and, as you know, having practiced law there's really only one way that courts can enforce their orders when somebody is being contumacious and refusing to obey an order, and that's to send the U.S. Marshals out to take somebody in and to hold them in contempt or to otherwise enforce court orders."

"Well, who does the U.S. Marshals Service work for?" Conway added. "The U.S. Marshals Service is part of the United States Department of Justice. It reports to Donald J. Trump, and what's going to happen here, mark my words, is that at some point, they are going to basically tell the United States Marshals Service, do not enforce any of these orders, we will not obey them, and you are not to enforce them and, once that happens, I mean, I hope it doesn't happen, but I know in my heart that it will, our 236-year experiment in the federal rule of law, in democratic self-governance for the United States of America, in American constitutionalism, is essentially over."

Conway didn't see any institutional bulwark against Trump's abuse of the rule of law.

"The only recourse is to go out on the streets and march," Conway said. "That is the only recourse. The courts have no mechanism to enforce their orders other than through the United States Marshals Service, and that's through the Department of Justice, thus through the executive branch. The reason why we obey court orders is because the executive branch complies with court orders. If the executive branch does not comply with court orders and makes a point of saying that we will not comply with court orders, the rule of law, as far as the federal government is concerned, is over, and that is something we need to start focusing on and discussing, because that's where these people will go."

"There is no logical stopping point for them, and this is, you know, the only recourse will be for people to get out and say, we want the rule of law, we want a government that obeys the law, and that's going to require people to go out on the streets, because that is, there is no other alternative," he added.

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MSNBC's Joe Scarborough shared an alarming reason he said Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and other Republican senators are dropping their objections to some of Donald Trump's "unqualified" nominees for Cabinet posts.

Collins announced her support for Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence despite her previous objections, and the "Morning Joe" host said skeptical Republicans were approving Trump's choices in fear of something more ominous than a GOP primary challenge.

"You know, there's an old saying in soccer, in English football, it's the hope that kills you," Scarborough said. "Yeah, I suspect they have a similar saying in Maine about Susan Collins. It's the hope that kills you.

"I wonder if she was assured by the way Tulsi Gabbard handled her relationship with the butcher of Syria, [Bashar al-]Assad responsible for the murder of 500,000 Syrians, also, who used chemical weapons against his own people or, again, Edward Snowden, where she refused to condemn Snowden in one question after another question after another question."

"Susan Collins, supposedly a traditional Republican," Scarborough added. "There is no way she would ever vote for Tulsi Gabbard except for political expediency and fear, is there?"

Republican senators have said that Gabbard, a former Democratic lawmaker, appeared to be unprepared for their meetings and hearings, and they were "rattled" by her non-answer on Snowden. But some outspoken skeptics on Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have made sudden flip-flops on their objections.

"Some members of Congress that I've spoken to said, 'Listen, it's not just the primarying that we have to worry about,'" said journalist Katty Kay. "'It's actually our own personal safety that we now have to worry about. I have to worry about the safety of my spouse, the safety of my children if I defy Donald Trump,' and when you've got Don Jr. coming out very forcefully and saying, 'We want all of these to be a yes,' there is no exception for Tulsi Gabbard. There is no exception for Bobby Kennedy.

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"He is speaking for the MAGA base, and literally I've had members of Congress say, 'Look, you know, you do have to worry in this day and age, you have to worry about your own safety, as well — it's not just the primary factor."

Collins did vote against Hegseth, who was confirmed after Vice President J.D. Vance stepped in to break a 50-50 tie after Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) opposed his nomination. But so far, none of Trump's nominees have attracted a crucial fourth Republican vote against them.

"Let's again underline what Katty just said," Scarborough said. "Members of Congress are telling her that they're not only afraid of primary challenges, they're afraid of violence. They're afraid of violence if they vote against people who are unqualified to run the most important agencies in America."

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Former Trump official John Bolton isn't buying the explanation from president Donald Trump for the decision to end Secret Service protection for him and other former administration officials who have become critics.

Trump halted security details for his former national security adviser, along with former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and his aide Brian Hook, who have all been targeted by alleged assassination plots by by Iranian nationals, but the newly inaugurated president said they were no longer entitled to costly Secret Service details.

"If you could ask all of us – I'll speak for all of them, I think I can do that," Bolton told CNN. "We'd be delighted to say we'd like to see the protection ended well before the end of our lives. If the threat diminishes, if the threat level remains high – look, it's up to the president, but getting, in my case, getting Secret Service protection is not a perk. It's not something you should want, it was provided by president [Joe] Biden because of threats that have subsequently been documented in a Justice Department criminal charge against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards official trying to hire a hitman against me."

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The Justice Department charged a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, who remains at large abroad, in August with plotting to kill Bolton as revenge for the January 2020 drone strike that killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.

"I think they follow the media in Tehran," Bolton said, "and when they see that Mike Pompeo and myself no longer have coverage, given that it's just a few [months] ago now that the federal officials arrested a Pakistani national working for the Iranians, trying to hire assassins to kill president Trump – this is a very real ongoing threat. I was told as recently as the weekend before the inaugural that the threat level remained the same, and I should say, you know, neither I nor any of the other people who are receiving the protection have anything to do with establishing the threat level. That comes from a consensus from the intelligence community."

"So the idea that nobody's entitled to protection for the rest of their lives, except, of course, former presidents is kind of a non-answer to the point," Bolton added. "I think Trump knew exactly what he was doing."

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A well-connected Florida journalist rolled his eyes at a recent report that suggested Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) would not last long as Donald Trump's secretary of state, but he did single out one nominee who might not even get confirmed.

Axios reporter Marc Caputo appeared Wednesday morning on CNN, where he discussed a Politico report that quoted foreign policy experts predicting that Rubio would be undercut by MAGA loyalists as the nation's top diplomat.

"My eyes almost rolled into the back of my head," Caputo said. "I can't say how much B.S. that is. Remember, Donald Trump chose Marco Rubio to be secretary of state. He knows who Rubio is and what Rubio believes, and the differences between these two guys on foreign policy is very, very thin. When Marco Rubio was a United States senator and Donald Trump was president, the first time as Trump 45, Rubio was essentially the de facto secretary of state for the western hemisphere. He was a constant Trump adviser. Trump bounced ideas off of him, took his advice, listened to him. In fact, as I've reported previously, at one point Trump was musing and was being urged to invade or have a military action in Venezuela. Who talked him out of it? Marco Rubio did. So whoever this ambassador is, I'm not sure if they're named, they don't know what they're talking about."

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Rubio is not expected to face much opposition from the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee where he previously sat, and Trump's controversial defense nominee Pete Hegseth also appears poised to make it past the Senate Armed Services Committee, but Caputo said the president-elect's inner circle is concerned about one of his picks.

"In Trumpworld, when you ask them, how confident are you about something on a scale of one to 100 percent, they're always going to say 110 percent," Caputo said. "Now, that said, they will acknowledge that of all of the nominees, the one who is encountering and could encounter the most turbulence is [intelligence director nominee] Tulsi Gabbard. She has, in some of these meetings with Republican senators, according to both Punchbowl News and the Wall Street Journal, struggled at times to answer questions about her views on surveillance. She doesn't seem or didn't seem in some of these meetings to be as well prepared for the job of national director of intelligence. Now some Republicans have since come out and said, 'Okay, she's answering our questions, we're more than happy.'"

"In the end, though, the Republican Senate, the Republicans who control the Senate understand that Donald Trump is a Republican and most of them believe, if not all of them believe, that he should get his picks," Caputo added. "The one exception to that was Matt Gaetz. They bounced Matt Gaetz, and in Donald Trump's view, if you got rid of my Matt Gaetz pick, you need to pick everybody else, though, as you said, one of the issues seems to be that there is reporting that it is Republicans who have been less than thrilled with their interactions with Tulsi Gabbard."

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) walked back one of Donald Trump's many Day One promises with a condescending remark.

The president-elect made an attention-grabbing promise during a May 2023 town hall to "settle" the Russian-Ukraine war within "24 hours" of taking office, which was actually his campaign's most consistent promise, but the Georgia Republican told NOTUS the media had simply gotten that oft-stated position wrong.

“I think you need to understand language,” Greene said, "and everyone else in America understands that language.”

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“I don’t think the media pressing Day One is specifically ‘Day One,’” she added. “But he’s talking about that as one of his first roles as president, and there are many. He’s going to be writing hundreds of executive orders but, yes, ending that war is important.”

Greene then said it would be "useless" for reporters to try to “hold president Trump’s feet to the fire."

"President Trump will be the one that ends that war where the Democrats and Joe Biden fail,” Greene said.

The president-elect has spoken by phone with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy since the November election, and Russian president Vladimir Putin said he was "open" to a meeting with Trump, but his own special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, admits a Jan. 20 settlement as unlikely.

“Let’s set it at 100 days,” Kellogg said, "and move all the way back and figure a way we can do this in the near term to make sure that the solution is solid, it’s sustainable and that this war ends so that we stop the carnage.”

Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who will be White House press secretary, said that Trump has “repeatedly stated that a top priority in his second term will be to quickly negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Russia-Ukraine war.”

“He will do what is necessary to restore peace and rebuild American strength and deterrence on the world stage,” she said.

House speaker Mike Johnson also would not commit to Trump ending the conflict on Day One, but said his return to the presidency would be a "game changer," and other Republicans seemed to agree that his presence in the White House would shock Putin into winding down his invasion.

“We have a weak, beta male, passive president,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO), referring to president Joe Biden. “Trump is going to come in. He can’t be pushed around. I think that Putin understands that and respects that. He has to respect that.”

Donald Trump called for the creation of a new federal agency dedicated to collecting the tariffs he's threatening to impose on U.S. trading partners — but he was quickly taught there's already a government entity that does that.

While the president-elect and his allies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have called for the elimination of millions of government jobs and even some federal departments, Trump sketched out a proposal for a new one that suggests his tariff threats are more than just a negotiating tactic.

"For far too long, we have relied on taxing our Great People using the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)," Trump posted. "Through soft and pathetically weak Trade agreements, the American Economy has delivered growth and prosperity to the World, while taxing ourselves."

"It is time for that to change," Trump added. "I am today announcing that I will create the EXTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE to collect our Tariffs, Duties, and all Revenue that come from Foreign sources. We will begin charging those that make money off of us with Trade, and they will start paying, FINALLY, their fair share. January 20, 2025, will be the birth date of the External Revenue Service. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

ALSO READ: Fox News has blood on its hands as Trump twists the knife

But it seems his newly announced External Revenue Service is redundant because an agency has been collecting external revenue for almost as long as the U.S. has been a sovereign nation.

"The president-elect appears ignorant of the fact that there’s been an 'external revenue service' since July 31, 1789," posted Andrew Feinberg, White House correspondent for The Independent. "That’s when George Washington signed legislation creating the US Customs Service, the forerunner of what is now [the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency]."

Hotel bookings are way down ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration next week, and applications for protest permits are also off pace compared to the last time he took office.

The president-elect's first inauguration sparked furious protests that led to violence and arrests in January 2017. This year the National Park Service has fielded far fewer requests for permits and law enforcement officials don't anticipate trouble managing any crowds that do converge to oppose the incoming president, reported the Washington Post.

“The ‘Never Trump’ universe was bigger then,” Patrick Mara, chairman of the D.C. Republican Party, said of the last time Trump was inaugurated.

Hotel occupancy rates for next Sunday hovered at about 70 percent as of last week, according to Smith Travel Research. That's compared to 95 percent the night before Trump's first inauguration eight years ago and 97.2 percent for Barack Obama's first inauguration in 2009. That rate plunged to 78 percent for his second inauguration in 2013.

Trump's inaugural committee has raised a record $170 million to go toward a parade, swearing-in ceremony, a "victory rally" at Capital One Arena on Sunday and a national prayer service Tuesday at Washington National Cathedral. Information about other events are "forthcoming," according to the inauguration website.

“The Inaugural events will draw supporters, industry leaders, and diplomats of all backgrounds to Washington DC to join the president in ushering in America’s new golden era,” said Rachel Reisner, director of communications for the Trump inaugural committee.

Authorities say there have been no specific security threats ahead of the inauguration, which is classified as a “national special security event,” but D.C. police will be fully activated all weekend — meaning that officers will be on duty starting Friday for as long as they're needed. They'll be joined by about 4,000 officers from around the country and up to 7,800 National Guard troops — down from the 25,000 troops deployed for Joe Biden's inauguration in 2021, two weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The largest demonstration planned for next Monday, the “People’s March,” estimated in its application that 50,000 people would attend their protest. The Park Service is still processing several other permits, but no one is expecting anywhere near the roughly 470,000 demonstrators who showed up in 2017 for the Women's March, the Post reported.

Panelists on "CNN This Morning" tried to make sense of Donald Trump's imperialist threats against Canada, Greenland and Panama.

The president-elect refused to rule out military or economic actions to take control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, which he has mused about doing since his Nov. 5 re-election, and he has suggested a merger between Canada and the U.S., saying that all of those territorial expansions would be necessary for national security.

"What Donald Trump is trying to argue is that there are many other conflicts around the world where it's not in our interest to be involved," said Republican strategist Kristen Soltis Anderson. "We've gotten too overextended, [Trump says] but this is in our interest. This is in our hemisphere, this is something that is important for us to do, and in a way, I think the reason why you see Donald Trump so animated about all of this is I think he views it as a really big real estate transaction. What does Donald Trump do? Big real estate transactions, branding – the Gulf of America. I mean, this is this is just Donald Trump taking the same playbook he's been running for decades and now trying to apply it to the U.S. government yet again."

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CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams agreed that Trump wasn't fully serious about his imperialist ambitions, but he cautioned against dismissing his comments altogether.

"We were here four years ago where the former president, president-elect will make these claims that in many ways are kind of preposterous, but there's an element of truth to them," Williams said. "Like, yes, we technically could under the laws of the military annex another nation if we so chose. But here we are once again, assessing the seriousness of these kind of harebrained, almost schemes being cooked up by the former president. That could be the future of America, but it's hard to know where we go from here."

Susan Wild, who lost her re-election bid to the U.S. House in November, pointed out that Greenland was an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark – which was a co-founding nation of NATO.

"Keep in mind, he didn't rule out the idea of using military power," said Wild, a Democrat who served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "Invading Greenland would mean invading a NATO country, and under Section 5 of the NATO treaty, all NATO countries have an obligation to come to the defense of any of their allies. I mean, it's just preposterous that we would ever be able to do that by way of some sort of if we actually invade, if we actually invade Greenland."

Anderson circled back and admitted that Trump might actually be serious about invading those allies he has threatened, but she reiterated her earlier point.

"Have me back on the show, show me this clip of me saying we're not going to invade Greenland, and you can tell me I'm dumb," Anderson said. "You can tell me I'm foolish. We're not going to invade Greenland, but I think to the extent that Donald Trump thinks of this as like a real estate deal, he says things like all options are on the table because he's trying to have the strongest negotiating posture. It may be ridiculous. We're in for four more years of it, but this is totally in line with how Donald Trump works."

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Republicans are increasingly worried about the political blowback if Donald Trump carries through with the policies his base demands, according to a new report.

The president-elect promised to enact historically sweeping mass deportations during his campaign, and Republicans are trying to figure out the logistics of such an operation and wondering whether it will hurt them politically, reported NOTUS.

“If Trump goes way too aggressively, way too fast, and you start seeing families separate, and kids torn from their mother’s arms, I think he runs the risk of losing in the court of public opinion,” said GOP consultant Mike Madrid, an expert on immigration issues. “It’s really hard to know who the winner is going to be because we don’t know what the policy is going to be, but I can tell you that the loser will be the one that overreaches first.”

Republicans acknowledge that photos and video of sobbing children in makeshift cells turned the public against Trump's hardline policies in his first presidency and would likely prove just as powerful again, but his base voters could turn against the GOP if those promises aren't carried out.

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“It’s a very risky issue to separate yourself from Trump on, if you’re a Republican up on Capitol Hill. It’s probably his strongest issue, and the public really wants to see him deliver on it,” said political consultant Matt Mackowiak. “We’ll have to see what the public response is to the policy as it gets announced and as it starts getting carried out. What do the pictures look like? What are the consequences?”

Texas Republicans are in an especially tight bind on the issue, especially those whose districts are along the border, like Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), who has said deportations should focus on more serious criminals instead of undocumented workers.

“I do think that the Tony Gonzaleses of the world, in Congress, are going to find themselves in a peculiar situation,” Victor Avila, a former ICE special agent who ran against Gonzales in the primary but didn’t qualify for the runoff, said. “They will be singled out. There will be a spotlight on them if they don’t quote, unquote, vote in the way that people want them to vote.”

Gonzales' district, which stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, could prove to be a leading indicator for the political reaction to Trump's immigration policies.

“That district really represents sort of the emergent Republican base in that it has a mix of people who are border security hawks because of where it’s geographically located, but the shift that’s happening is largely economic,” Madrid said. “He’s a bellwether beyond himself. That district really is going to be a good gauge of what’s going to work and what doesn’t.”

But some conservatives say the recent flap over H-1B visas shows that Trump's base isn't willing to compromise on immigration.

“Even Trump is no longer in control of what the base wants,” said Rick Wilson, a Florida-based consultant and Lincoln Project co-founder. “Trump is siding with Elon Musk on the H-1B visa issue, and the base hates that. You end up with a scenario where … the Republican base gets angry because you’re not sufficiently aggressive enough on immigration.”

One of Donald Trump's holiday greetings sparked rumors that he and his wife Melania could be heading for a split.

The couple have never been especially affectionate in public, but the president-elect's Christmas post on Instagram recycled a photo of them from more than a half decade ago, and that prompted social media users to question the health of their relationship, reported The List.

" Trump recycled a picture of himself and Melania that, per the X page Melania Trump 45 Archived, was apparently taken back in December 2018," the website reported. "Using an old picture rather than taking a new one might have been a matter of convenience, given the president-elect's imaginably packed schedule, but some believe his failure to pause and take a new photo with his wife is a telling indicator that Donald and Melania might be on the rocks."

ALSO READ: Trump is already walking back on his promises

Many social media users noticed the low-effort post and wondered why they hadn't posed together for a new Christmas photo.

"Trump tried to pass off an old 2018 White House photo of himself with Melania as a 'Merry Christmas! 2024' post today," noted the X account Patriot Takes, which says it is dedicated to "researching and monitoring" right-wing extremism "and other threats to democracy."

"Was the last time she was next to him and coincidentally the last time she smiled for a photo," said business owner Sean McDaniel, adding a gif showing Trump and Elon Musk laughing together. "He has a new love now."

"Did she even spend a minute with him on Christmas?" added the X account Diego Dog & Barbara. "She really can’t stand him."

"He has no idea where she is," said the X user called jltdawg.

Donald Trump's team is planning a range of extreme actions immediately upon taking office.

An Axios analysis of hundreds of the president-elect's speeches, news conferences and interviews determined that his Day One promises centered around three themes – immigration, big business and what the website described as "red meat for MAGA."

"President-elect Trump is setting the stage for an explosive first day in office: pardons for Jan. 6 rioters, a vacuum sealing of the southern border and a massive regulatory rollback affecting vast swathes of the American economy," Axios reported. "The tone of the next four years will be set on Day One. Trump and his transition — armed with a cannon of executive orders — are preparing an early shock-and-awe campaign to lay the foundation for his ambitious second term."

Border hawks Stephen Miller and Tom Homan will discharge a torrent of executive orders to end president Joe Biden's "parole" programs, restart construction of the border wall and halt refugee admissions, and Trump intends to set off a mass deportation operation with splashy photo opportunities on the first day of his administration.

"The second bucket of executive orders will seek to institutionalize the conservative culture wars that have dominated Republican politics over the last few years," Axios reported.

Trump is expected to immediately prohibit diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, ban trans women from women's sports and pardon his supporters convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

"CEO and investor confidence has soared in the wake of the election, as Corporate America revels in Trump's promise to slash 10 regulations for every new one introduced during the Biden administration," Axios reported. "Trump has vowed to expedite permits for drilling and fracking, even if it means acting like a 'dictator' for one day."

Trump intends to cut off government support for electric vehicles and roll back emissions standards, but he seems intent on imposing sweeping tariffs on foreign trade partners – despite Wall Street's efforts to persuade him to back down on that threat.

"Many of Trump's sweeping promises will require the support of Congress," Axios reported. "Others have proven to be hyperbole, which Trump himself has acknowledged."

Donald Trump assured voters during his campaign that he would lower prices on groceries and other items — but a former congressman called him out for already abandoning that promise.

Tech tycoons Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos have donated $1 million each to Trump's inauguration despite his past attacks on them, and former Democratic lawmaker Max Rose said the president-elect is already siding with the rich and walking away from the policies he promised to voters.

"This is not what Donald Trump ran on," Rose said. "Donald Trump ran and won this presidential election largely by co-opting traditional Democratic talking points in and around fighting an elitist class that was both culturally estranged from working people and working against the economic interests of working people. He did not run on this notion that he was going to parade billionaires down to Mar-a-Lago in what is ultimately an escalator of transactional deals.

"So this speaks to potentially what the Trump administration will actually look like, which is traditional Republican politics of being there for the top 1 percent. That's not only a bad set of policies and agendas for working people in the United States of America, but it's also going to be very poor politics."

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Republican strategist Brad Todd, however, didn't see anything wrong with Trump associating with the social media magnates and suggested that Democrats had unfairly benefited from their largesse in the past.

"People like Mark Zuckerberg have been in the pocket of Democrats and donating millions and millions to Democrats for generations, these same donors who you're decrying for going to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President-elect Trump," Todd said. "They're Democratic donors. I don't know how you can how you can take those things and not equate them."

Rose insisted he was not decrying their donations to Trump's inauguration, but he said it was still a betrayal of his campaign promises.

"This is not what Donald Trump ran on," Rose said. "Where were the commercials that said that he is going to surround himself by billionaires at Mar-a-Lago who give me give him a million bucks? Where were the commercials that said he's going to listen to donors and then talk about annexing the Panama Canal because someone's upset about their higher toll rates, that they're paying. This is not what he spoke about, but it is how he is governing."

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Donald Trump's allies have discussed dismantling a Depression-era reform intended to prevent bank failures and maintain trust in the financial system, according to a report.

Sources told CNN that the president-elect's allies are interested in shrinking or even closing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and giving the Treasury Department oversight of deposit insurance, but former regulators and academics say that makes little sense and questioned whether Congress would go through with that plan.

“This idea would pose an enormous risk of terrifying Americans about the safety of their deposits and triggering bank runs,” said Patricia McCoy, a law professor at Boston College and former federal regulator.

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The FDIC provides a safety net funded by the banking industry that protects customers from their bank going belly up with at least $250,000 in insurance provided to every depositor at each insured bank where they've got money, and while some believe there are too many bank regulators, experts doubt lawmakers would close this one.

“This has as much logic as asking if Trump can abolish Wednesday, and split it between Tuesday and Thursday,” said Aaron Klein, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former Treasury Department official who helped craft the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. “The FDIC’s brand value to consumers is immense. Millions of Americans trust the FDIC insures their nest egg.”

The FDIC receives no congressional appropriations, and its deposit insurance fund covering trillions of dollars of deposits is instead funded by charging premiums on banks, not taxpayers, but sometimes those costs are passed on to bank customers through fees.

“This is one of the dumbest ideas anyone could have, and it’s a reflection of how incredibly out of touch billionaires are,” said Dennis Kelleher, CEO of the government watchdog Better Markets. “In 2008, the FDIC was absolutely pivotal in stabilizing the financial system and making sure the Great Financial Crisis didn’t become a second Great Depression. Eliminating the FDIC or cutting it back would be a disaster for the American people.”

The idea of ending or shrinking the FDIC has echoes of the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint for Trump's second term, but Congress has historically opposed calls to consolidate bank regulators, and experts think the threat against the agency is intended as a not-so-subtle message to the president-elect's appointees.

“If they don’t go along with the regulatory agenda of Donald Trump, there is an existential threat in the background that could be triggered,” said Mills. “In my mind, this is a way to work the umpire – before the umpire even takes the job.”

CNN's Daniel Dale fact-checked Donald Trump's latest news conference — and determined the president-elect told a lot of lies.

Trump held the event — the first since he was elected — Monday from his home at Mar-a-Lago, where he discussed his views on vaccines, tariffs and other policy issues. Dale highlighted some of his false or misleading claims.

"So there was a lot of lying from the president-elect at this press conference," Dale said. "But I think the most dangerous part was an equivocation.

"It wasn't really a claim, but he was asked whether he thought there was a link between vaccines and autism, and he equivocated. He said, 'Well, we have some brilliant people looking at this,' and he talked about the increased prevalence of autism diagnoses. Look, there is no link between vaccines and autism. This notion has been discredited by study after study over decades. The idea that there is some connection came from a thoroughly discredited, in fact scandalous, fraudulently altered study in the 1990s that should just be ignored, dismissed, again, because it was fraudulent, and so the idea that, well, we're just going to look into this, I think is dangerous to consider because the idea is simply wrong."

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"I'll pivot to some other topics," Dale continued. "He talked, as usual, about tariffs, said under his first presidency, we took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China. That money was paid by Americans. It is American importers who pay the tariffs, not Chinese exporters, and many of those importers pass along the costs to U.S. consumers. He said no previous president had tariffs on China – that's wrong. He said there was no inflation under his own presidency, despite the tariffs – certainly lower than during the Biden presidency, but there was 8 percent cumulative inflation during his presidency, so not nothing. In talking about health, he also said, well, 'Europe has lower mortality than us or better mortality,' and they don't use pesticides. Europe uses hundreds of thousands of tons of pesticides every year, so I'm not sure where he got that idea."

"Earlier in the press conference, he said over and over, I think three times, that during his presidency there were no wars, like, no wars, period, in the world – that is simply not true, a rewriting of history," Dale concluded. "One research institution said there were active armed conflicts in about 50 states in 2020, including, of course, civil wars in Yemen, in Syria, in Somalia, we had an active Israeli-Palestinian conflict. U.S. troops deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere, so the idea that this was a world at peace left by Donald Trump to Joe Biden, simply not true."

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George Conway predicted Monday that Donald Trump would run into trouble by claiming power that he doesn't actually have.

The president-elect has nominated loyalists to high-ranking positions that many say are less than qualified, which could provoke a showdown with the Republican-led Senate. The conservative attorney said Trump could also lose a power struggle with the U.S. Supreme Court on some of his plans to gather power.

"I mean, look, he's already talking about doing things that he does not have the power to do," Conway said. "The [Voice of America] director – okay, I was, like, looking at that and saying, 'Interesting, I didn't know that was a direct presidential appointment,' and looking at the statute, it takes 10 seconds in the statute to see there's a chain. He doesn't have direct control over the VOA.

"Now he may get what he wants anyway, but it's, like, okay – that doesn't work."

The Department of Government Efficiency, a quasi-government advisory board led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, could trigger additional legal battles as they attempt to slash $2 trillion from the federal budget.

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"DOGE or whatever that is does not exist," Conway said, "and to the extent it is ever made to exist, has to comply with various statutory provisions that, I don't know, maybe they have a plan for doing that – I don't know, and it's, like, you know, the thing is, one of the things we know about Donald Trump is he shops around for advice. He goes from lawyer to lawyer to say, 'Can I do this? I want to do this,' and one lawyer will say no. Well, that one is gone."

Trump has banished the more traditional conservatives, like former White House counsel Don McGahn, who served as guardrails during his first term and prevented him from taking some unlawful actions, but Conway said the former president may encounter obstacles he does not expect.

"Those people are gone," he said. "The Don McGahns are gone, and so, you know, he's going to be trying to do things that he may, you know, end up — I think probably will — end up losing. He didn't do all that well in the Supreme Court when he was president."

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CNN's Kate Bolduan clashed with a conservative commentator over the role of experts in government.

More than 75 past Nobel Prize winners sent an open letter Monday to the U.S. Senate opposing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, saying his lack of credentials and unconventional views on medical science "would put the public's health in jeopardy."

Bolduan asked conservative pundit Shermichael Singleton to comment.

"These aren't elites, though," Bolduan said. "I mean, these are world-renowned leaders in fields like medicine, chemistry, economics and physics. They include the men who were awarded this year's Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of microRNA. My thing about this is, I get we we are all very clear on what it feels like to, you know, play politics with whatever, but when did we start to stop listening to people who are actual experts on things?"

Singleton disagreed with the premise of her question, saying those experts had elite pedigrees, and he argued that their assumptions should be challenged by others outside their areas of expertise.

"Sure, I have respect for people who spent a lot of time mastering something and moving the needle forward in terms of our understanding of sort of rare or complex disciplines," Singleton said. "I think that that matters for us as a nation and for the world.

"However, let's look at some of the facts as it pertains to our health care system – 40.3 percent of Americans, according to the CDC, are obese. That number has increased since 2011. The United States, according to the same data, ranks 34th in terms of our health care system."

Bolduan cut him off, saying that Kennedy and other vaccine skeptics were putting American children at risk, and Singleton argued that scientific experts got some things wrong during the coronavirus pandemic.

ALSO READ: Agenda 47: Alarm sounded about Trump’s dystopian plans for his second term

"A lot of the rhetoric that we heard from many of the same experts during the Covid pandemic, where now you have millions of American kids who are significantly behind academically, they're going to struggle to catch up with the rest of the world, who are leaps and bounds ahead of us, and we listened to the experts," he said.

"Then we trusted the experts, then all I'm simply saying is, it's okay to ask questions. It's okay to have a healthy dose of skepticism."

Singleton continued to argue that Kennedy's promised challenges to assumptions about public health were valid because so many Americans were unhealthy, but Bolduan argued that many of the topics the Donald Trump nominee had promised to investigate were not considered to be controversial by scientists.

"You can ask lots of questions, and questioning Covid lockdowns is one thing," Bolduan said. "What is not in question is how many lives have actually been saved by things like the measles vaccine, the polio vaccine. What has happened, and that is what I'm getting at, because you're adding two things together.

"Lots of people can question how experts handled an unfolding pandemic in front of all of us. It's one thing to deny the data from decades of how many lives have been saved from vaccines that children do not suffer from, and what it would mean if that skepticism and the questions we're suggesting are out there, then start getting into the mindset of millions of Americans, once again, led by someone who has not only been a skeptic of vaccines, is a cynic of vaccines."

Singleton insisted that he was not personally denying the effectiveness of vaccines, but Bolduan seemed frustrated by his line of argument.

"These things, these are like apples and oranges, like questioning Covid lockdowns and saying, but, like, that's a good question to have," Bolduan said, as a producer urged her to end the segment for a commercial break. "But also maybe you should question vaccines because that's what's being added together. All right, clearly we've got to go because they're about to cut my mic. Guys, thank you so much."

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A Democratic lawmaker excoriated Donald Trump's promise to pardon his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The president-elect said he would "most likely" pardon at least some of the rioters on "Day One" of his second term, and Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) told CNN that Trump's campaign pledge was offensively wrong.

"It's just offensive," Kildee said. "I mean, I was there, I saw it firsthand — people attacked the Capitol, they beat police officers, people died. Had they gotten through past those officers, what they would have done to some of us who were trapped in that gallery on that terrible day.

"We don't know what they would have done, and the very notion that the people Democrats and Republicans who were trying to hold those individuals accountable would, in Donald Trump's mind, be those who are culpable and he would somehow see these attackers, this mob, this unruly, dangerous mob is somehow being righteous – either he's intentionally stupid, which I'm not sure how much he understands about how the rule of law ought to function in society, or he just has so much more in common with some of these totalitarian dictators that he seems to align himself with, that he's willing to do these sorts of things."

ALSO READ: Agenda 47: Alarm sounded about Trump’s dystopian plans for his second term

Kildee hedged on whether President Joe Biden should extend preemptive pardons to members of the Jan. 6 committee who Trump has threatened with prosecution.

"I'm not a lawyer, and I don't really agree with the presidential authority to offer pardons, no matter who it is," Kildee said. "But I do think we're at an incredibly important inflection point. I would hate to see people who are simply trying to do their job to protect this country, suddenly become the victim of a totalitarian-leaning president."

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A masked man shot and killed the CEO of UnitedHealth outside a hotel in midtown Manhattan, according to reports

Insurance executive Brian Thompson had arrived around 6:46 a.m. at the Hilton Hotel for a conference when a gunman who had allegedly been lying in wait for him opened fire and then fled, reported the New York Post.

The 50-year-old Thompson was rushed to Mt. Sinai Hospital in critical condition but was later pronounced dead, police said.

ALSO READ: EXCLUSIVE: Senate Dems consider whether Biden should ‘clear the slate’ and pardon Trump

The suspect was described as a white man wearing a cream-colored jacket, black face mask and black-and-white sneakers, and investigators said he was also carrying a grey backpack.

The shooter hadn't been a guest at the hotel, but it's not clear whether he had other business there.

The suspect fled though a nearby alley and then fled the scene on a bicycle, and he remains at large, according to multiple reports.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough explicitly called B.S. on Donald Trump's nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, and his revenge scheme over the 2020 election.

The MAGA loyalist has said he would prosecute or sue individuals whom he claims stole that election from Trump, and the "Morning Joe" host wondered whether he would target dozens of judges who rejected the former president's fraud claims in lawsuits he lost four years ago.

"I'm curious, is he going to go after the 63 federal judges who said the lie was bulls--t?" Scarborough said. "Is he going to go after them? is he going to go after the United States Supreme Court, who said it was bulls--t? Is he going to after Clarence Thomas and [Samuel] Alito, the two most conservative justices, who when they reviewed the Pennsylvania appeal said, 'Well, we need to look at this for legal reasons but it wouldn't have changed the outcome of the election.' Is he going to go after them as well? I mean, seriously – 63 federal decisions, the Supreme Court, you can go on and on and on.

"This is absolutely preposterous. I'll tell you what else is preposterous."

"You can use B.S.," co-host Mika Brzezinski gently chided him over his cursing.

"I did – did I not say that?" Scarborough replied, deadpan. "Yeah, I thought I said that. Anyway, I'll tell you what else is preposterous, and this next one really speaks to it."

Trump and his Republican allies are claiming a broad mandate from voters after winning the White House, Senate and House, which the president-elect has cited to justify his extremist plans, but Scarborough said his election win was historically narrow, and the GOP's legislative majorities were similarly thin.

ALSO READ: Will Trump back the FBI’s battle against domestic extremists? He won’t say.

"Like we said repeatedly going up the election, this race is tight," he said. "Now I can see if this was like an LBJ-style blowout like in '64 or a Nixon blowout in '72 or a Reagan blowout in '84, but this was one of the closest elections ever, especially if you look at the outcome of the House and the outcome of the Senate, and the only reason Democrats are not in charge of the United States House of Representatives and Hakeem Jeffries is not speaker of the House is because North Carolina legislators rigged the process so badly that they took away three Democratic seats there in a rigged redistricting attempt that actually held up."

"So, again, here we are, one month since the 2024 election, and only one House seat that remains uncalled this morning that is breaking Democratic makes it look like they are in a dead tie," he added. "You know they'd call this, like, in Europe? A unity government, because they are basically tied. So all these people who are saying that this is the end of the world for the Democratic Party, I think they may be overanalyzing this just a bit."

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MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Jonathan Lemire claimed Monday that some in Donald Trump's orbit aren't thrilled by his nomination of MAGA loyalist Kash Patel as FBI director.

The election conspiracist has already promised to prosecute Trump's political enemies and media figures from the start of a second administration, and the "Morning Joe" host warned that Patel faces an uphill battle to get the job leading the nation's top law enforcement agency.

And some of the opposition is coming from people standing right beside Trump.

"Kash Patel is not just controversial among media outlets or Democrats, he is not just controversial among Republican senators," Scarborough said. "He is controversial inside Trump's own orbit. You go inside Trump's own orbit and it is split down the middle with half the people thinking he is going to be a disaster for any Donald Trump administration and they never wanted this nomination to see the light of day because, again, that divide goes straight through MAGA world for those around Donald Trump."

Lemire said he's hearing the same from his sources.

"People I talked to say this pick was a nod to the extreme right-wing portions of Trump base, the Steve Bannon, ultra-MAGA sector here who had been disappointed by Trump's picks like treasury secretary and secretary of state," Lemire said.

ALSO READ: Will Trump back the FBI’s battle against domestic extremists? He won’t say.

"This is Trump throwing them red meat because he knows he needs to keep them happy, but other people in Trumpworld are deeply worried about this pick, that Patel is not only not qualified but dangerous, that he will not think twice or hesitate in carrying out whatever Trump wants, people say, even for people breaking the law."

There's speculation that Trump could sidestep a confirmation battle by firing current FBI director Christopher Wray and appointing Patel as an interim director for several months.

"That seemed trouble and this seems hardly a sure thing, but if he were to fire Wray, Patel could step in in an interim way for 200 or so days," Lemire said. "Even if he can't be confirmed it will be enough to carry out some of Trump's agenda."

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Some of Donald Trump's appointees have reported violent threats since the president-elect nominated them to high-level government positions, but an analyst said one of his unelected advisers was putting lower-level officials and employees at risk.

The former president has tapped foreign-born tech mogul Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to head the newly created quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency to drastically cut federal spending, and the X owner has revealed the names and titles of four relatively obscure government workers in a post revealed tens of millions of times and resulted in waves of harassment.

"He's essentially sort of a vice presidential sort of foil," said CNN's Juliette Kayyem. "We don't even see [vice president-elect J.D.] Vance much anymore. We see Elon Musk a lot more. He's very close with the president."

Musk singled out retired Army Lt. Col Alexander Vindman in an X post Wednesday accusing the former Trump impeachment witness of "treason" and warned he "will pay," and Kayyem said the tech CEO was needlessly putting individuals at risk for violence.

"People are nervous to take this on, but it really does have to be taken on, so, I mean, Elon Musk just needs to honestly grow up – just grow up," Kayyem said. "I mean, this is silly behavior, and he may view it as funny. I mean, he sort of has an odd sense of humor, you know, there's you know, he's, you know, he's just very excitable."

"But what happens is people see that and they take it as a license to do something very unfunny," Kayyem added, "and so anyone who's an expert in these fields on whether online or incitement or have has seen the wave of incitement to violence over the last four, eight, 12 years, really understands that that kind of language, whether a joke, whether he just thinks he's powerful, that punching down that he does is not only scary for the recipient of it, the unnamed person, right, but is also just, it's so easy to punch down, right, and I think we have to just grow up at this stage."

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A former Donald Trump staffer said the Matt Gaetz flameout showed Republican senators were more willing to oppose the once and future president in his second term.

The Florida Republican withdrew his nomination Thursday after just eight days, three days short of Anthony Scaramucci's 11-day tenure as Trump's communications director – a measure of time he jokingly calls a "Mooch" – and he told CNN that episode shows the president-elect doesn't have control over the incoming GOP majority

"Obviously, a lot of the things that [former] Rep. Gaetz did was disqualifying, but I think the tide has changed a little bit," Scaramucci said. "I think there's been a shape shift by the Republicans in the Senate. You know, they see Trump as a lame duck. They know there's one more election that he can have lots of influence on, which is the congressional election in two years, and I think they are fortifying themselves to block some of the things that he's done in the past, and so the Trump season, you know, this is 'The Apprentice: White House Edition' season two. I think the cast members up on Capitol Hill are ready for Donald Trump this time. I don't think they were as prepared as they are now, and I think the messaging [to Gaetz] was, behind closed doors: 'You're not going to make it, don't embarrass the president and withdraw.'"

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Scaramucci suspects at least one of Trump's other nominees could be forced to bow out over rape allegations.

"Now, the other questions are, you know, about some of these other candidates," Scaramucci said. "Well, Pete Hegseth ended up having to do the same thing, and I will predict if there's more information about Pete that comes out, he'll be No. 2 to go that way. But I think Pam Bondi, by the way, will do well. Pam Bondi says the things that Donald Trump likes to hear, but she won't do the things that Donald Trump likes to do, and so I think that's someone that respects the system, and I think she'll get it. I think she'll get through."

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Business leaders are nervous about the economic impact of two of Donald Trump's signature campaign promises — and some of them are hoping they can talk him out of going through with them, according to an analyst.

The president-elect has vowed to impose stiff tariffs on imported goods and deport millions of migrants, which economists say would likely increase inflation. MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire told "Morning Joe" that Wall Street is worried.

" Trump prizes the economy most of all," Lemire said. "That's his favorite metric whether or not his presidency is a success, and for both on this idea of deportation and the tariffs idea, they're linked here. There is some belief that business leaders and others will talk him out of it and say, 'Look, you'll ruin the economy if you do these things, it will damage your presidency.' That's possible."

However, there's no indication that Trump or his advisers are backing off their plans, which the president-elect confirmed could include declaring a national emergency and ordering the military to assist in the deportations.

"Maybe it will narrow, but at least right now they're talking big," Lemire said. "They're acting like they're going to go through it, and these are, again, the signature promises of his campaign. Maybe, yes, maybe he'll cut a deal, maybe he'll make it smaller. Maybe he'll take the win and move on to something else, but maybe not. A lot of people in this country are afraid he'll do exactly what he says."

The president-elect has also authorized tech billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to make drastic cuts to federal spending, which would likely cast millions of government workers out of their jobs, and MSNBC's Claire McCaskill said that poses deep threats to the economy.

"Elon Musk is talking about cutting two-thirds of the federal workforce," McCaskill said. "Well, by the way, does he know that two of the largest employers in the federal workforce are the Pentagon and Homeland Security? If you take those agencies and set them aside and cut the workforce, then we're talking about people who deliver payments to the American citizens. We're talking about the Medicare system that delivers payments on behalf of Americans.

"We're talking about Social Security that delivers payments on behalf of America. So there really is this disconnect between how realistic a mass deportation is in light of other things they say they're going to do and how it will look to America if they erect these large holding facilities with the money they take from the military, which, by the way, they tried with the wall. He declared a national emergency and diverted Pentagon funds to do, what, 20 miles, 100 miles? He didn't build it, but he built some of it."

"It really is a head-scratcher," McCaskill added. "They will be very savvy about using, deporting people who have been convicted of crimes or charged with crimes. They'll do really smart photo-ops with those folks, and there's about a million of those people in the country. Most of it's low-level crime, some of it is not. That's what they will do first and the big splashes they'll use to try to convince Americans that he's doing some mass deportation. But I think [to be determined] on the idea he could do a mass deportation, and I don't think the American public will stand for it."

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Two advisers close to Donald Trump are engaged in a bitterly personal power struggle over some of the former president's Cabinet nominees, according to a new report.

Elon Musk quickly worked his way into the president-elect's inner circle after pouring about $200 million into his re-election campaign, but there are already signs of tension between the tech mogul and other Trump advisers — specifically longtime loyalist Boris Epshteyn, reported Axios.

"Their rocky relationship came to a head last Wednesday during a heated discussion at a dinner table in front of other guests at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, three people familiar with the episode told Axios," the website reported. "At one point during what the sources described as a 'massive blowup' and a 'huge explosion,' Musk accused Epshteyn of leaking details of Trump's transition — including personnel picks — to the media. Epshteyn responded by telling Musk that he didn't know what he was talking about."

Epshteyn pushed for former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) as attorney general, and Musk questioned whether the longtime adviser had too much influence over his top Justice department picks and the White House counsel pick of William McGinley, the sources said, while Epshteyn bristled at Musk's criticism.

Musk has been pushing for Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick as treasury secretary instead of Wall Street favorite Scott Bessent, a hedge fun manager who visited Mar-a-Lago last week.

"Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas [Lutnick] will actually enact change," Musk posted on his X platform. "Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt."

The tech billionaire is well-liked by Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson and Trump's two eldest sons, but his near-constant presence at Mar-a-Lago has irritated some longstanding members of Trump's inner circle.