Sen. Bill Cassidy to Newsmax: Trump-Musk Rift Could Offer Distraction

The rift that has developed between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk could draw attention away from how senators change the "one, big, beautiful bill" that passed the House, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., told Newsmax on Friday.

The relationship between Trump and Musk, who until recently headed the president’s Department of Government Efficiency, deteriorated quickly Thursday after Musk spoke out against the sweeping tax-cut and spending bill that is at the heart of the president’s agenda.

During Cassidy’s appearance on "Wake Up America," co-host Marc Lotter asked the senator whether the Trump-Musk feud could distract people from focusing on what the Senate is doing with the legislation.

"Would this be the first time that the master of the media, Donald Trump, distracts people over here and something else is happening over there? Absolutely not," Cassidy said. "Now, I don't think that's the intent, but I do think that might be the effect."

Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), said the tax-cut bill remains "a work in progress."

"I was in like five meetings yesterday on this big, beautiful bill, and that's just me. Everybody else is doing it as well," Cassidy said. "My staff, I'm the head of one of the committees, and I think we found like $300 billion in things that the Biden administration had done terribly, costing the taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars.

"We're going to pull that back and we're working on that. And that's a bargain for the taxpayer. So I feel very positive about our ability to do things that are good for the taxpayer."

Cassidy also told Lotter and co-host Sharla McBride that Musk's attacks on Trump may stem from things other than the bill.

"I don't know if Elon doesn't like the bill so much as he's looking at ways to attack the president," Cassidy said, "and looking at everything else he's saying, it just may be he wants to go after the president. So clearly there's something between them. Maybe we just need to consider the bill separately from that.

"The Senate is taking the bill and there's some things that we got to take out of it because it just can't pass the Senate with it. There's other things ... I think we're making it better. The final product is not there. We have to judge it on the final product. But we have at least another week or two before we're ... as we continue to work on this. So, I'm very optimistic."

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