Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he is a "huge Elon fan," remains supportive of what Elon Musk was trying to do in government, and has stayed in regular contact with him since the two men clashed earlier this year, describing their disagreements as the kind of argument teammates have in a locker room before taking the field together.
Bessent made the remarks in an on-camera interview, according to a transcript circulating with video posted by the account @clashreport and the account @MarioNawfal. "Again, I am a huge Elon fan, and in terms of what he was trying to do with government, very supportive, and there was one turn that things were taking that we didn't agree on," Bessent said in the transcript carried by both accounts.
Asked about a possible meeting, Bessent said he had seen Musk at the White House. "Elon, I was at the White House the other day for the big AI meeting. Have the two of you met up? Yeah, I mean, that's a good thing," the transcript reads, an exchange that moves from a question to Bessent's answer.
The secretary then expanded on his relationship with Musk. "I've often said that we're kind of like a sports team. You can have an argument in the locker room, but you go out in the field together, and you're all doing the same thing. So I've been in regular contact with Elon, and he's amazing. He's taking us to Mars. Look what he's done with SpaceX," he said, according to the transcript.
The two accounts carried the same transcribed wording, which is what happens when a single clip is pulled and reposted. The @clashreport post went up at 11:47 UTC, and the @MarioNawfal post followed at 12:35 UTC, roughly forty-eight minutes later. Both were posted on October 3, 2026.
The @MarioNawfal post led with the same line about being a huge Elon fan and supportive of what Musk was trying to do with government, then carried the sports-team comparison. "We're kinda like a sports team. You can have an argument in the locker room, but you go out in the field together," that post reads. The @clashreport post carried the identical passage and cut off mid-sentence on the word "He's," which is typical of reposts that trim a video caption for length.
The underlying substance of Bessent's remarks is not in dispute between the two posts; both transcripts are identical word for word, including the reference to the AI meeting at the White House and the comments about Mars and SpaceX. What differs between the two is formatting, not content.
The context for Bessent's remarks is a public rupture between Musk and the administration earlier this year, when Musk departed his role leading the Department of Government Efficiency after a dispute over spending legislation. The two men exchanged sharp words publicly over the summer, and the White House subsequently moved to close the breach, with Musk appearing at events in the months that followed. Bessent's comments suggest that the relationship has stabilized behind closed doors even where the two sides continue to disagree.
What Bessent described as "one turn that things were taking that we didn't agree on" is the only reference in the transcript to a specific disagreement, and he did not elaborate on which policy or decision it referred to. It is not known from the remarks alone whether the disagreement concerned the same spending bill that preceded Musk's departure or a separate matter.
The White House AI meeting that Bessent referenced took place in recent days. The transcript does not identify which officials attended or what was discussed, and no readout of that meeting has been circulated with the clip.
The framing Bessent offered, comparing a political dispute to a locker-room argument between teammates, tracks with messaging the administration has used since the summer as it has sought to keep Musk's network of companies and his political network aligned with its own priorities. Musk's companies hold billions of dollars in federal contracts, and his public profile remains among the largest of any private-sector figure in the country.
The posts circulating the clip were not the first to carry Bessent's remarks. Both accounts presented the material as a direct quote from an interview, with the video transcript matching the text of both posts. The phrase "he's taking us to Mars" and the reference to SpaceX close the exchange in both versions.
Next News Network could not independently verify the circumstances of the interview, the identity of the interviewer, or whether the exchange took place on the record at the White House or elsewhere.
No response from Musk to Bessent's comments has been posted, and no statement from the White House on the interview has been released.
The wider environment in which the comments were made includes a Treasury Department action this week: the department designated the Russia-linked A7 payment network as a significant transnational criminal organization on October first, according to Newsy Today. That designation targets the A7 network over what the report described as shadow banking channels. It is not clear from the reporting whether Bessent's public remarks were made before or after that designation.
What is clear is that the secretary was asked about Musk and that he answered in personal terms. The transcript describes a man still supportive of the work and in regular contact with the person who led it, even after a fight he described as an argument between teammates. "He's amazing," Bessent said, according to the transcript.
Our Take
Bessent's remarks amount to an admission that the administration was always going to keep Musk inside the tent, whatever the two sides said about the spending fight at the time. There was never a real break here. Once a Washington conflict gets described as a locker-room argument between people on the same team, the story stops being about accountability and starts being about message discipline. The secretary is telling donors and conservative voters that the Musk era in government did not end, and his "huge Elon fan" line is doing work, even if his praise about Mars is doing some too. The administration wants the Musk coalition, and the money that comes with it, pointed in the same direction for the next election cycle. If the White House wanted the public to know what the locker room argument was about, Bessent had his chance to say and did not take it.
