Trump says media can’t drive wedge between him and Musk

Donald Trump has mocked what he said were media depictions of Elon Musk as the real power in the White House, saying attempts to drive a wedge between himself and the tech billionaire have failed.

“They do it all the time,” the US president says in excerpts posted on Saturday from a Fox News interview to be aired on Tuesday.

Speaking as if in a news anchor’s voice, Trump went on, “We have breaking news: Donald Trump has ceded control of the presidency to Elon Musk. President Musk will be attending a cabinet meeting tonight …”

The Republican president is famously prickly about being outshone by anyone in his entourage, and there has been widespread speculation that Musk’s high profile could lead to his downfall.

The South African-born Musk, while nominally just the head of a new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), has taken on extraordinarily broad powers in identifying what he says are areas of waste and then moving quickly to cut jobs and spending.

Those moves by the world’s wealthiest person have drawn jibes in the press, including a Time magazine cover showing Musk sitting behind the president’s iconic Resolute Desk, and a New Yorker cover showing both Trump and Musk, hands on a Bible, together taking the presidential oath of office.

  

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