White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has dismissed the public feuding between Elon Musk and Peter Navarro, saying: “Boys will be boys.”
Leavitt said the “sparring” would continue and the Trump administration had no problem with it.
Her admission came despite Musk using a variation on an offensive slur in one of a series of X posts on Tuesday attacking Donald Trump’s top trade advisor.
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The world’s richest man wrote that Navarro was “dumber than a sack of bricks” and used a variation of the r-word slur, calling him “Peter Retarrdo” and a “moron”.
“Look, these are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs,” said Leavitt at her press briefing on Tuesday. “Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue, and you guys should all be very grateful that we have the most transparent administration in history.
“I think it also speaks to the president’s willingness to hear from all sides,” she added.
“He has people at the highest levels of this government in this White House that have very diverse opinions on very diverse issues but the president takes all opinions in mind and he makes the best decision based on the best interests of the American public.”
Earlier Leavitt gave a similar response when asked about the feud by CNBC. “Whatever,” she said. “We are the most transparent administration in history, expressing our disagreements in public.”
The feud started before the weekend after Musk went public with his reservations about the president’s tariff plan, suggesting Europe should not face any levies.
Navarro, widely believed to be the architect of the sliding scale levies, singled out the Tesla billionaire, calling him a “car assembler” who wanted cheap foreign parts.
Musk hit back suggesting on X that Navarro’s “PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing.”
The feud appeared to have calmed down, but Musk was back with a vengeance on Tuesday with a string of posts attacking the tariff guru who had been pushing Trump to take a hardline view and knock back attempts to negotiate by world leaders.
“Tesla has the most American-made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks,” wrote Musk.
“By any definition whatsoever, Tesla is the most vertically integrated auto manufacturer in America with the highest percentage of US content. Navarro should ask the fake expert he invented, Ron Vara,” he wrote in another message, referring to a fictional character Navarro has used in his books as a “whimsical device”.
