President Donald Trump has taken another swipe at his former friendship with Elon Musk after announcing the new NASA appointee.
Trump has revealed the new interim head of NASA to be Transport Secretary Sean Duffy.
Taking to his own social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday (July 9), Trump wrote: “I am pleased to announce that I am directing our GREAT Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, to be Interim Administrator of NASA.
“Sean is doing a TREMENDOUS job in handling our Country’s Transportation Affairs, including creating a state-of-the-art Air Traffic Control systems, while at the same time rebuilding our roads and bridges, making them efficient, and beautiful, again.
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“He will be a fantastic leader of the ever more important Space Agency, even if only for a short period of time. Congratulations, and thank you, Sean!”
Duffy took to Musk’s social media site X, formerly Twitter, to respond by saying: “Honored to accept this mission. Time to take over space. Let’s launch.”
Duffy is taking over from Janet Petro who held the position from January this year.
However, it looks like it could be a blow for Musk as the Tesla boss had lobbied for his friend Jared Isaacman to be selected for the role.
Trump had initially nominated Isaacman, who went through the hearing process with the Senate Commerce Committee back in May.
However, the honor was stripped away just days before the Senate was due to vote on his candidacy.
At the time, Trump said that there was a ‘thorough review of prior associations’ taking place.
But appearing in an episode of the All-In podcast just weeks later, Isaacman revealed that he believed his nomination was taken away due to his friendship with Musk.
He said: “There were some people who had some axes to grind, and I was a good, visible target.”
And it seems like Musk might not be best pleased with the choice of Duffy after the pair reportedly argued during the SpaceX founder’s time in the White House.
Duffy allegedly shouted at Musk back in March, saying: “I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?”
The following month, Duffy said in a press conference: “Do I want to make our government more efficient? Do I want to be able to do a little more with a little less, because then I put more money into the great work that we do? Yeah, I want to do that. But you can’t do that without good people, right?”
He added: “And so, though I want us to be more efficient, I also look, and as I think of DOGE cutting things, I don’t know about that elsewhere, but we actually build things here, right?
“You can’t cut your way to a new road, you can’t cut your way to a new bridge, you can’t cut your way into a new air traffic control system. So we’re actually going to build in this department.”