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The Trump Team Sure Loves Trolling Elizabeth Warren

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  December 18, 2024 12:30 PM

This post has been updated to include relevant posts from Elon Musk over X. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has been rather hysterical lately about Elon Musk, who has been tasked to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with Vivek Ramaswamy. On Monday, Warren sent a strongly worded letter to President-elect Donald Trump to request conflict of interest rules about Musk. 

As The Washington Post noted about her letter and Trump addressing concerns about Trump:

The letter sent by email from the Democrat’s Senate office to Trump’s transition team notes that regular members of the Trump Vance 2025 Transition Team operate under an ethics policy that requires them to “avoid both actual and apparent conflicts of interest.” Those rules, which have been published by the General Services Administration, include prohibition from transition team members working “on particular matters involving specific parties that affect” their interests.

...

“Putting Mr. Musk in a position to influence billions of dollars of government contracts and regulatory enforcement without a stringent conflict of interest agreement in place is an invitation for corruption on a scale not seen in our lifetimes,” Warren wrote. “As your Transition Team Ethics Plan makes clear, the role of government is not to line the pockets of the wealthiest Americans; a strong, enforceable ethics plan for the world’s richest man is a necessary first step for delivering on that promise.”

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In a recent interview with Time magazine, Trump was asked whether he considered Musk’s role as an adviser a conflict of interest, given the substantial government interests of companies he owns.

“I think that Elon puts the country long before his company,” Trump answered. “He considers this to be his most important project, and he wanted to do it.”

The Warren letter asks the Trump team 14 questions about the rules governing Musk, his associates and others involved in the Department of Government Efficiency project that Trump has asked Musk to lead. The questions concern what ethics rules Musk has agreed to and whether he has agreed to recuse himself from any matters.

“Moving forward, will he recuse himself from matters affecting Tesla, Space X, X, or any other company he owns or in which he has a substantial investment?” Warren asks at one point.

“Currently, the American public has no way of knowing whether the advice that he is whispering to you in secret is good for the country — or merely good for his own bottom line,” Warren wrote.

The report also contains comment from Karoline Leavitt, who was the press secretary for the Trump campaign and the transition, and who will serve in such a role during the Trump-Vance administration. 

"President Trump has assembled the most impressive and qualified team of innovators, entrepreneurs, and geniuses to advise and staff our government," Leavitt said in a statement that looks to have represented the Trump team well. "Pocahontas can play political games and send toothless letters, but the Trump-Vance transition will continue to be held to the highest ethical and legal standards possible — a standard unfamiliar to a career politician whose societal impact is 1/1024th of Elon Musk’s."

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It's also noteworthy how The Washington Post frames Leavitt's response, lamenting how she "did not address Musk’s ethics commitments in her response to the letter" and "addressed Warren with a derogatory nickname that Trump has used to describe Warren because of her claims to having some Native American ancestry."

Trump himself, and many other Republicans, have referred to Warren as "Pocahontas" or even "Fauxcahontas." There's also very little mention of Warren's claims that she had Native American ancestry, and only to provide context to Leavitt's points. The senator made such claims on her employment forms to advance her role in academics, and Harvard Law School was able to list her as an American Indian on their affirmative action forms. 

Leavitt has reposted the TFTC X account, noting how "Trump's team fired back" with such a response that she gave. 

Musk further called out The Washington Post, with a quoted repost of his noting that it was "True" that "You don't hate legacy media enough," especially since the outlet barely paid it any mind what Warren did to get ahead.

Warren still continues to raise concerns, though. On Tuesday night she appeared on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes" to continue to complain about Musk and the multiple companies he has.

"Those companies are directly with the United States government. Millions, millions, and millions of dollars worth of government contracts. Millions of touch points where there are rules that will affect those companies," Warren insisted, as Hayes could be heard agreeing with her. She also mentioned investigations into those companies and Musk. 

The senator became even more hysterical from there, though. "And here he is whispering into the ear of Donald Trump. So what is he whispering? Is he whispering, 'Here are ways to help the American people,' or is he thinking through ways to make those companies richer, to back off the regulators, or to end any investigations into his work?" she wondered. "This is a conflict of interest at a level that we have never before seen in this country. And it is critically important, first of all, that we call it out, and second, that we start to push back and say no. The American public has a right to know who's giving this kind of advice to Donald Trump," she then also claimed. 

Musk, meanwhile, has also responded by poking fun at Warren with posts to X using Grok. He too has very much capitalized on the "Pocahontas" nickname.