 "Team Trump at war: Internal power struggle threatens Trump’s Maga agenda")
With seven months in the Oval Office, US President Donald Trump is facing one challenge after another within his team. Internal power struggles have been brewing in the Trump administration 2.0, giving the POTUS a hard time in resolving the clashes.
Trump and his team’s ever-changing stances on several matters are also leaving his “Make America Great Again” supporters largely divided. The latest feud brewing within the Trump administration is between Trump’s Envoy for Special Missions, Richard Grenell and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Critics argued that Grenell’s “freelancing” skills are damaging diplomatic negotiations with other nations and threatening national security. The Grenell vs Rubio saga is not the only one that rocked the Trump administration. Tensions have been simmering between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) over the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Here’s a look at the power struggles that are in play within the Trump administration:
Grenell vs Rubio
The most recent controversy that has hit the US Department of State involves a botched effort to secure the release of Americans unjustly detained in Venezuela. According to a report by The New York Times, the deal fell apart after Grenell and the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, were negotiating a separate deal with the Venezuelan side.
As per the report, the Gernell deal included an extension for Chevron to export oil from Venezuela, a policy option that Rubio has shot down in the past.
While Grenell has brought home seven Americans unjustly detained in Venezuela, Rubio was forced in May to publicly reject Grenell’s suggestion that Trump would extend a license for Chevron to operate in the Latin American nation. The NYT report soon stirred a storm in the White House, with the administration going into damage control mode.
When asked about the tussle, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Hill, “There is no faction or division. The President has one team, and everyone knows he is the ultimate decision maker.” However, Elliott Abrams, who served as special representative for Iran and Venezuela in Trump’s first term, said there are “certainly” tensions between Grenell and Rubio. Overall, this left the Trump administration in an awkward position.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsDoJ vs FBI
Earlier this month, Trump’s Department of Justice and the FBI concluded that they found no evidence that infamous sex offender and British financier Jeffrey Epstein blackmailed powerful figures, kept a “client list”, or was murdered.
The memo soon created an apparent divide between the FBI and the DoJ . Both departments eventually struggled to contain the fallout, with far-right media personalities soon starting to pick sides. Not only this, the acknowledgement that the Epstein client list never actually existed, sparked a contentious conversation between Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino at the White House this week.
Bongino even went on to threaten to resign, and many of the Trump supporters became restless. This was the first time the Trump administration had officially contradicted conspiracy theories about Epstein’s activities and his death. Interestingly, these two theories were actively pushed by the FBI’s top two officials before Trump appointed them to the bureau.
Both FBI Director Kash Patel and Bongino were among those in the MAGA world who questioned the official version of how Epstein died. Since then, both Patel and Bongino admitted that the British sex offender died by suicide. But the reports of Bongino quitting eventually prompted Trump to pick sides in the tussle.
Trump emphasised that no more time and energy should be wasted on the case since no one cares about Epstein. The president was attempting to unite his base through a nearly 400-word post on TruthSocial. “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’ They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB !” Trump wrote in the post on Saturday.
“We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein," he added. However, the two sides continue to remain divided over the matter.
Hegseth jumping the guns
Earlier this month, NBC News reported that US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth solely decided to halt sending aid, even though experts noted the aid would not have jeopardised the US’s readiness to defend itself.
As per the report, this is the third time Hegseth has halted US military supplies to Ukraine. When US President Donald Trump was asked about the pause on Thursday, he claimed that it was a necessary move because “Biden emptied our whole country, giving them weapons, and we have to make sure we have enough for ourselves”.
However, while speaking to NBC News, Trump mentioned that he was unaware of a pause ordered by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth halting the distribution of a planned weapons shipment to Ukraine.
To save face, Trump emphasised that he and NATO leaders had reached an agreement in which allies would pay for US arms that would be then sent to Ukraine. “We’re sending weapons to NATO, and NATO is paying for those weapons, 100 per cent,” he told the American news outlet.
On Iran
The US’s decision to join Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities also left MAGA divided and concerned. Some of the ardent supporters of Trump called out his administration for dragging the US into the 12-day war.
While Trump claimed that Iran is just weeks away from acquiring nuclear weapons, the American intelligence suggested otherwise. On March 25, Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, unambiguously told members of the US Congress that Iran was not moving towards building nuclear weapons.
“The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ali] Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003,” she said at that time.
However, Trump dismissed Gabbard’s assertion, and the DEI herself changed her stance. But the difference in the take also made several MAGA supporters uncomfortable. The tussle settled only after Iran and Israel agreed to a ceasefire.
Apart from this, there have been other simmering tensions within the Trump administration. For example, US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and former DOGE boss Elon Musk. With all these tussles stemming out in just seven months of the Trumpian era, it will be interesting to see how the POTUS will navigate these cracks.
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