Elon Musk shoved Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ‘like a rugby player’ during White House clash: Report

WASHINGTON, DC: Things got a little wild in the White House when Elon Musk allegedly body-checked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent after a heated meeting in April.

According to a bombshell report by The Washington Post, the moment spurred Musk’s falling out with President Donald Trump.

The clash reportedly started during a tense meeting where Musk and Bessent each pitched rival plans to revamp the IRS. Bessent’s plan got Trump’s seal of approval, and the tech titan was not having it.

Former White House power player Steve Bannon told The Post that the two men stormed out of the meeting, throwing verbal punches right outside the president’s office.

Bannon claimed, “Scott said, ‘You’re a fraud. You’re a total fraud,’” a jab aimed at Musk and his ambitious plan to slash $1 trillion from federal spending. But it didn’t stop at name-calling.

According to Bannon, Musk proceeded to ram his shoulder into Bessent’s rib cage "like a rugby player,” causing Bessent to swing back. Staffers had to jump in to pull them apart before things got uglier. “President Trump heard about it and said, ‘This is too much,’” the political strategist added.

Elon Musk vs Donald Trump showdown

More recently, Elon Musk took his fury to X (formerly Twitter) and launched a multi-day tirade aimed squarely at Donald Trump, mostly over the president’s support for what he calls the “big, beautiful” spending bill that's moving through Congress.

The president told reporters from the Oval Office, “I’ve helped Elon a lot,” adding he was “very disappointed” in the former DOGE head.

Musk fired back online, claiming Trump owed his entire 2024 reelection to him. He insisted his political donations had sealed the GOP’s Senate majority at 53-47 and kept control of the House.

According to federal campaign filings, Musk dumped over a quarter billion dollars into Republican campaigns during the 2024 cycle.

Elon Musk-Donald Trump fallout gets messy

Elon Musk exited the Trump administration just two days before his 130-day term as a special government employee with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was set to expire.

By Thursday, June 5, the feud had escalated quite a bit. Trump threatened to “cancel the Billions and Billions” in government contracts and subsidies tied to Musk’s companies, including Tesla and SpaceX.

Elon retaliated with a now-deleted X post accusing Trump of suppressing documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, hinting they could implicate the commander-in-chief himself.

It's worth noting that both Trump and Epstein’s ex-lawyer David Schoen have previously acknowledged Trump’s ties to Epstein in the 1990s, but it was all a part of the public record.

“I was hired to lead Jeffrey Epstein’s defense as his criminal lawyer 9 days before he died. He sought my advice for months before that. I can say authoritatively, unequivocally, and definitively that he had no information to hurt President Trump. I specifically asked him!” Schoen wrote on X.

Steve Bannon calls for Elon Musk's deportation

As Elon Musk and Donald Trump's messy feud unfolded, the latter's former adviser and loyalist Steve Bannon gave his two cents.

He called for a federal investigation into Musk’s immigration status, demanding that the South African–born billionaire be deported “immediately.”

Musk, however, is an American citizen, according to public records.

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