Messy fight for Trump’s treasury chief spills into public

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A messy fight over who should be President-elect Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary has played out privately at Mar-a-Lago in recent days. It all spilled into public view on Saturday.

Two of Trump’s most powerful allies, Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., used social media to signal their support for billionaire businessman Howard Lutnick to lead Treasury, as Trump continues to deliberate on the crucial post. Musk’s support for Lutnick even went as far as to discredit another finalist for the job, investor Scott Bessent, whom Trump has expressed great admiration for and who is considered a top contender.

Late Friday, it appeared Lutnick had begun to fall out of the running for the job, people familiar with the matter said, prompting Musk and Kennedy to make their cases in public on Saturday. The last-minute burst of public support for Lutnick, the chief executive of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, puts pressure on Trump to choose him amid a fierce public and private lobbying campaign over the job that has pitted Lutnick against Bessent. Musk and Kennedy collectively have nearly 210 million followers on the social-media platform X.

Musk, who has been advising Trump on personnel, wrote on X, his social-media platform, that Lutnick would “enact change." Musk wrote: “Would be interesting to hear more people weigh in on this for @realDonaldTrump to consider feedback. My view fwiw is that Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas @howardlutnick will actually enact change. Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change one way or another." Asked for comment, Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, “President-elect Trump is making