As a dramatic rift widens between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, one pundit is urging Trump to "fire, investigate, and prosecute" Musk's DOGE team.
CNN commentator Van Jones said Trump should go after what's left of DOGE "if he's smart," suggesting Trump needs to purge his administration of Musk's loyalists.
"Those DOGE employees are very dangerous. If Donald Trump is smart, the first thing he’s going to do is fire, investigate and prosecute all of Elon’s people who are all throughout government with their laptops downloading data right now," Jones said.
Jones explained, "Listen, I don’t think that what they’re doing is legal... A lot of them don’t have the proper clearances. And I think that if you investigate, you’ll find they’ve uploaded data into servers that are that are the wrong, the wrong thing to do. So I think there should definitely be an investigation there."
The blowup between Trump and his former campaign benefactor has led to speculation about a potential divide emerging within the GOP.
Some have questioned whether Musk could use his fortune against Trump and his Republican allies in the midterms next year, although Musk's political influence has come into question after he bungled a Wisconsin Supreme Court race earlier this year.
In the meantime, Jones suggested that DOGE's continued presence in the White House gives Musk leverage over Trump.
"If Donald Trump is smart, the leverage that Elon has is he left, his kids didn’t. They’re still in there. So this fight, if it’s going to be a fight that Donald Trump prevails on in the short term, go after DOGE. Long term, he’s got to steal the Republican Party to deal with an Elon Musk that’s promising to spend money now in a decade from now,” Jones opined.
The drama erupted Tuesday when Musk, just days after departing the White House, called Trump's sweeping legislative agenda a "disgusting abomination" and urged Republicans to scuttle it.
Things escalated on Thursday as Musk, in a span of hours, called for Trump to be impeached, took credit for his re-election victory and all but called him a pedophile, claiming without any evidence that Trump is "in the Epstein files."
For his part, Trump has handled the situation with restraint, although he was beginning to show signs of impatience as Musk spiraled on Thursday.
After admitting he was "disappointed" in Musk for trashing his "Big, Beautiful Bill," Trump threatened to terminate the tech billionaire's government contracts and confirmed that he asked Musk to leave the White House because he was "wearing thin."
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
While Musk appeared to calm down by the end of the day on Thursday, his erratic behavior has clearly impacted Trump's view of him, and not for the better.
"You mean the man who has lost his mind?" Trump told ABC News on Friday, adding dismissively that he is "not particularly interested" in talking to him.
