Republican governor claims Elon Musk is too rich to have conflicts of interest in government

Elon Musk is too rich to care about making more money, a GOP governor claimed in an interview Sunday.

Chris Sununu made the bold claim on CNN State of the Union when he sat down for an interview with co-host Dana Bash. The New Hampshire Republican is one of the few holdouts in his party to remain in office without fully adopting the MAGA brand — although Sununu has been far more respectful than others like him.

The CNN anchor asked Sununu during his interview whether Musk, whose companies have won lucrative government contracts, faced a conflict of interest by serving as a close adviser to the new president.

He told Bash that the Twitter and Tesla boss is “so rich that he no longer has any potential financial influence” if he serves as Donald Trump’s White House adviser. Musk will head the Department of Government Efficiency alongside failed Republican primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, presumably in the form of a presidential advisory board, with the stated goal of making proposals for cost-cutting measures to Trump. The position will have no direct authority, nor will Trump have direct authority over the federal budget — which is written by Congress and approved or rejected by the president.

Sununu also criticized progressives and liberal Democrats over the enormous net worth of Trump’s new Cabinet, which the president-elect’s critics say is indicative of a government designed primarily to benefit the wealthiest Americans rather than working-class families.

“I don’t mind that they’re billionaires; I like people who are successful,” the governor told CNN. “What’s the difference if they’re a billionaire or broke? I would rather have someone who is successful.”

Musk is currently embroiled in a civil war within the pro-Trump right. Backed by Trump himself, he and Vivek Ramaswamy have found themselves in hot water over a series of posts and other social media activity that highlight a stark divide within the conservative right over the issue of immigration and the American workforce. Musk and Ramaswamy are strong supporters of the H-1B visa program, which allows U.S. companies to recruit highly skilled workers who want to live in the United States. This program, and other similar visa programs for farmworkers and immigrants in other sectors of the U.S. economy, are in the sights of Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and the immigration hardliners at MAGAworld, who are pushing to end or severely restrict these programs.

Ramaswamy, his “DOGE” co-captain, sparked a wave of racist rhetoric against Indian-Americans and Indians in general on Twitter after he wrote a post suggesting that US culture was a factor, companies took into account when deciding to hire foreign-born workers.

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympian or the athlete over the valedictorian will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy wrote in a post on X last Thursday.

His comments sparked angry reactions from the wing of Trumpworld surrounding Bannon, whose War room The podcast is now central to the media sphere designed to support Trump’s second administration. It also sparked an angry response from Nikki Haley, Trump and Ramaswamy’s running mate in the 2024 Republican primary.

Musk wrote in his own post a day before Ramaswamy’s: “The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the US is far too small.”

Then, on Friday, he lashed out at Bannon and his other critics.

“These despicable fools must be removed from the Republican Party by any means necessary,” he wrote in one post, later clarifying that he meant “those in the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists… They will “Absolutely.” It would be the downfall of the Republican Party if they were not removed.”