'Crossed the line': Analysts warn 'something has changed' for Musk's place in Trump team

Musk' emails to Federl=al Employees created blowback from Cabinent members, Senators and Congress as well as skeptcism from the public

Donald Trump remains publicly supportive of his billionaire benefactor Elon Musk, but some of the president's cabinet members and other administration officials are reportedly frustrated by the highly visible quasi-government official.

Musk's role in the administration isn't exactly clear, but voters have shown that they're not thrilled with the cuts he's making through the Trump-approved Department of Government Efficiency. Puck senior political correspondent Tara Palmieri told CNN that Republicans are quietly grumbling about the power the president has given the tech mogul.

"His role is clearly a layer above cabinet and closer to the president, but he was an unelected official and he wasn't Senate-confirmed and yet he is telling these cabinet officials what programs they need to cut, which employees they need to fire, and these people are just getting into their roles right now, and they're just managing the situation, trying to figure out how the place works," Palmieri said.

"Here you've got Elon Musk and 40 people," she added, "a very small staff that does not have the time to go through and understand these departments, these agencies, these programs, these grants, and figure out what is needed and what's not, and they're just haphazardly getting rid of things, and here you have department heads taking calls from members of Congress, senators who are saying don't let him cut these programs, like Katie Britt, the senator from Alabama,.

"You know, she's been back-channeling to cabinet secretaries, saying if he touches NIH funding that goes to the University of Alabama, like, do not let him anywhere near that because it's hundreds of millions of dollars that her state gets, and I think, you know, in rhetoric, Republicans are fiscally conservative, but if you try to touch the programs or the entitlements that their constituents use, that's very unpopular."

Trump insisted on Truth Social Wednesday that all of his cabinet members were "extremely happy" with Musk, whom he credited in another post-Wednesday morning for his election win. Still, CNN's John Berman said that's not what his network's reporters are hearing.

"It does seem as if something has changed in the last week or few days," Berman said. "Again, you guys called it the 'Icarus moment,' crossing some kind of a line there. Washington Post reports that some people inside the administration are frustrated, we're getting the same thing here at CNN. We're hearing that cabinet secretaries are frustrated by this."

Palmieri agreed, saying that the tech mogul seems to have worn out his welcome with everyone except the president.

"I think he's crossed the line, especially these emails, that bullying email [demanding that federal workers] respond with the five things you did last week without any consideration of what this could expose," Palmieri said.

There have been several confrontations between Musk and the Treasury Department.

The Times goes on to report that, "The new authority follows a standoff this week with a top Treasury official who had resisted allowing Mr. Musk’s lieutenants into the department’s payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government."

"The official, a career civil servant named David Lebryk, was put on leave and then suddenly retired on Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit," according to the report. "The system could give the Trump administration another mechanism to attempt to unilaterally restrict disbursement of money approved for specific purposes by Congress, a push that has faced legal roadblocks."

However,

"Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency full access to the federal payment system late on Friday.

Despite some opposition of the President’s Cabinet Musk has some support, from the most critical guardians of the nation’s finances.