Matt Gaetz will still be in Trump’s admin despite AG drop out – real ‘million-dollar question’ is on Musk, expert says

According to a geopolitical analyst, Donald Trump will make room in his government for “kindred spirit” Matt Gaetz, but his connection with Elon Musk is the “million dollar question.”

An expert has provided insight into the composition of Trump’s second-term cabinet as it starts to take shape.

Gaetz resigned as Trump’s choice for attorney general last week after being accused of having sex with a 17-year-old girl and paying her to go to sex parties.

The former Florida representative claims he has become a distraction for the president-elect’s team, but he denies any wrongdoing.

Randall Schmollinger, a geopolitics specialist at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York, has stated that he thinks Trump will find a job for Gaetz, even though he was replaced by Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general.

He said, “Matt Gaetz has been an ardent Trump supporter from the very start,” to The U.S. Sun.

“He’s been a standard bearer for the MAGA movement, and I think he’s unlikely to go away.”

In addition, Schmollinger expressed his belief that Trump will give Gaetz “some role in that administration, whether in an official capacity, or whether he’ll just be someone the president can call upon when he needs advice.”

Gaetz resigned his seat in the House of Representatives, which complicates his return to politics.

However, Schmollinger clarified that Trump is likely to rely on Gaetz’s capacity to “drive people’s attention,” a trait that both the Republican and Gaetz possess.

“They are kindred spirits in that way,” he stated.

A QUESTION MARK AROUND ELON MUSK

Trump’s friendship with Elon Musk, the CEO of X and Tesla and one of the president-elect’s strongest supporters, has drawn more notice recently.

Trump has appointed billionaire Elon Musk to lead his new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE for short, which is a reference to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which Musk owns.

Shortly after winning the election earlier in November, Trump declared that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, would “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.”

Although it is still unclear what impact this will have on Musk within the Trump administration, Schmollinger thinks that relationship will be a defining feature of his second term.

“That is the one-million-dollar question,” he stated.

Even though they are both well-known and a lot can happen over the next four years, I believe that what we’ve seen in them and what they both acknowledge in each other is an X-factor—a propensity to surprise and think creatively about what’s going to happen and where they see things going.

“Musk has a very well-defined vision in his mind of where he sees American humanity going in the future, and I think Trump is very much the opposite,” he stated.

“He picks a direction and goes that way without much clarity about where it is he’s going, so they actually complement each other.”

Musk might provide a “clarifying vision” to Trump’s more intuitive style of leadership, Schmollinger continued.

However, there was a warning attached to that prognosis.

“Both Musk and Trump are going to do whatever they think is best for themselves,” stated Musk.

“I worry that Musk getting too close to the regulatory environment does give him too much control over the business landscape.”

However, Schmollinger cited Musk’s dominance of Twitter and his leadership in the expansion of electric cars as evidence that he can utilize his power to influence the political agenda under Trump.

In October, Musk stated at a Trump rally that he thinks the US government’s current $6.5 trillion budget can be cut by “at least” $2 trillion.

Additionally, he has advocated for the layoff of almost 75% of federal workers.

Schmollinger did, however, add that he thinks the 75% statistic might be overstated.

As part of their “public-facing persona,” Musk and Trump, he said, have a propensity to make audacious, overly ambitious assertions, but they are more willing to make concessions behind the scenes.

Schmollinger went on to say that it is not impossible that Musk’s DOGE agency will take a dramatic action.

“We’ve seen him do that with Twitter before where he got in there and cut 75% of the workforce and still had a functional app,” he stated.

However, Musk has no idea what it’s like to work for a government organization or in Washington.

“I don’t think that he is going to cut 75% of the government overnight.”

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