

President-Elect Donald Trump’s spokeswoman clapped back at Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) after the senator wrote a letter to Trump demanding to know what ethical standards are being applied to billionaire Elon Musk ahead of his appointment to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Trump has tapped Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to co-lead DOGE, his newly proposed advisory board tasked with eliminating government waste.
In the letter, Warren said Musk needs to “resolve his conflicts of interest if he wishes to continue serving as a top adviser to you and your transition team.”
Trump transition team spokesperson Karoline Leavitt responded in a cheeky statement: “President Trump has assembled the most impressive and qualified team of innovators, entrepreneurs, and geniuses to advise and staff our government. 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.”
Musk is behind multiple successful business ventures, including Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and X.
The billionaire reacted to Leavitt’s statement on X, writing: “The President was being very generous. Her societal impact is actually negative.”
Musk also accused her of acting on behalf of convicted frauster Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents.
“The person actually writing these things from Pocahontas are SBF’s parents btw,” he posted on X.
He went on to repost several images of Warren depicted as a Native American princess, as created by X’s AI chatbot Grok.
Warren sent the letter to Trump in an effort to establish any “conflict of interest” issues given what she called Musk’s “unofficial” position as “co-president.”
The Massachusetts Democrat pointed out that some of Musk’s companies have government contracts or receive “indirect government support.”
Warren added, “As a member of the transition team, Mr. Musk is not a federal employee, but the conflicts he faces are enormous and the need for him to be subject to similar ethics standards is obvious.”
She gave the Trump transition team a week from Monday evening to provide answers to a number of questions about the ethical standards Musk is being held to.
“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.