'Troublemaker': Donald Trump Shuts Down Reporter Over Reports of 'Clash' Between Musk and Rubio

The mainstream media loves to report on alleged "feuds" between Republican public figures. While sometimes they find nuggets of truth, oftentimes it's half-baked or not true at all, and ends up being nothing more than an obvious attempt at sowing division and drama among party movers and shakers.

President Donald Trump has good momentum right now on the question of the DOGE advisory group, their responsibilities, and what role Elon Musk plays in all of it.

So naturally, the MSM has been steady cranking out reports on alleged "tensions" between certain GOP lawmakers, some of Trump's cabinet secretaries, and Musk, with the most recent allegation being that there was a "clash" between Musk and Sec. of State Marco Rubio that supposedly required Trump's intervention.

Here's how the New York Times reported it:

Marco Rubio was incensed. Here he was in the Cabinet Room of the White House, the secretary of state, seated beside the president and listening to a litany of attacks from the richest man in the world.
Seated diagonally opposite, across the elliptical mahogany table, Elon Musk was letting Mr. Rubio have it, accusing him of failing to slash his staff.
You have fired “nobody,” Mr. Musk told Mr. Rubio, then scornfully added that perhaps the only person he had fired was a staff member from Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Mr. Rubio had been privately furious with Mr. Musk for weeks, ever since his team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr. Rubio’s control: the United States Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting on Thursday in front of President Trump and around 20 others — details of which have not been reported before — Mr. Rubio got his grievances off his chest.

Musk's alleged response was to scoff, according to the Times:

Mr. Musk was unimpressed. He told Mr. Rubio he was “good on TV,” with the clear subtext being that he was not good for much else. Throughout all of this, the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match.

Trump allegedly intervened soon after in defense of Rubio, according to the Times' telling of it.

During a press gaggle Friday in the Oval Office regarding an executive order on a FIFA World Cup task force, Trump was asked about the so-called "clash." Here's what he had to say:

Reporter asks about reported clashes at cabinet meeting between Secretary Rubio and Elon Musk.

President Trump: "No clash. I was there. You're just a troublemaker...Elon gets along great with Marco. They're both doing a fantastic job. There is no clash." pic.twitter.com/kYDgCyAtSY
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 7, 2025

My thought bubble on this was that even if there was a "clash," so what? You've got a lot of powerful people in one room who have important roles and heavy responsibilities along with different opinions on how to run things, what the priorities should be, etc. I suspect horn-locking during these types of meetings is quite common as people jockey for position and plant their flags.

Though DOGE was a rebranding of the Obama-era United States Digital Service, it's still for all intents and purposes a new thing that is evolving, with its structure having to be periodically tweaked and its responsibilities having to occasionally be clarified and adjusted, as happened this week.

But as even the New York Times acknowledged, "Cabinet officials generally like the concept of what Elon Musk set out to do — reducing waste, fraud and abuse in government — but have been frustrated by the hacksaw approach to upending the government and the lack of consistent coordination."

If there truly are "clashes" behind the scenes between members of Trump's cabinet and Musk/DOGE, so be it. As long as the end result is a) DOGE continuing to have the authority to call attention to waste, fraud and abuse, and b) the cabinet secretaries' roles and responsibilities are respected, I can't find it within myself to be too outraged if there are heated exchanges behind closed doors.

The battle for America's soul is on, and all of these people know it. Let them verbally duke it out to figure out ways to make government smaller, more cost-effective and efficient, and also how to win more ideological wars against the woke left. If in the end they leave America better off than it was when they started, the only thing they'll be doing is clinking glasses in celebration - as will the rest of us (excluding the New York Times, of course).

President Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE are bringing much-needed accountability to our out-of-control government as they take a chainsaw to rampant waste, fraud, and abuse.

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