WASHINGTON (news agencies) — It’s been a burning political question for weeks: How long will President Donald Trump — who doesn’t like sharing the spotlight — be able to do just that with Elon Musk, a billionaire also overly fond of attention?
In a joint Fox News Channel interview that aired Tuesday, both insisted they like each other a lot and would stick with their arrangement despite what Trump said were attempts by the media to “drive us apart.”
At times, Trump sat back as Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity heaped praise on Musk in an attempt to counteract a Democratic narrative that he’s a callous and unelected force out to destroy the government and upend civil society through sweeping cuts being imposed by the Department of Government Efficiency.
There were also moments when Trump and Musk were all but finishing each other’s sentences, as if they were part of a buddy comedy and not the president and his most powerful aide.
Here’s a look at how the friendship formed, what it means for them both and why Trump’s history suggests it may not last:
Trump told Hannity that he wasn’t really acquainted with Musk until recently, saying, “I knew him a little bit through the White House originally” but didn’t know him before that.
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and became a U.S. citizen in 2002. He’s the world’s richest man, with a net worth exceeding $400 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His vast business holdings include X, Tesla and SpaceX, as well as the satellite internet service provider Starlink.
Musk said he voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 and Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Musk has recently said that Tesla was being unfairly targeted by regulations in its original home state of California. Musk and the company’s headquarters moved to Austin, Texas in 2021, and he increasingly soured on Biden with the then-president’s embrace of unions that clashed frequently with Tesla.
In the past, Musk butted heads with Trump over climate change. They feuded as recently as July 2022 — with Trump calling Musk a “bulls—- artist.” He also suggested then that Musk came to the White House during his first term seeking federal subsidies for “electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere.”
“I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it,” Trump previously said on his social media site.
Musk originally backed Ron DeSantis in last year’s Republican presidential primary, even helping the Florida governor launch his White House bid in a glitch-marred presentation on X. But Musk met with Trump at his Florida residence last March and endorsed the then-canidate in July shortly after the first assassination attempt.
“I was going to do it anyway, but that was a precipitating event,” Musk told Hannity.
Musk appeared at his first Trump rally in early October, and his super PAC spent around $200 million to boost the Republican’s campaign. X also amplified messaging — and often disinformation — promoted by Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement.
The pair spent election night at the president’s Mar-a-Lago club. Less than a week after securing victory, Trump announced that Musk would lead DOGE, the new push to shrink government, alongside former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who left the commission by Inauguration Day.
Trump has empowered Musk to help him keep a campaign promise and “ shatter the deep state ” by firing scores of federal workers, shrinking or shuttering agencies and slashing the size of government.
“There’s a vast federal bureaucracy that is implacably opposed to the the president,” Musk told Hannity. He added: “What we’re seeing here is the sort of the thrashing of the bureaucracy as we try to restore democracy and the will of the people.”
Tesla and SpaceX have benefited from lucrative government contracts from the Defense Department, NASA and other federal entities, as well as plenty of tax breaks and subsidies over the years. The Trump administration could also take a lot of regulatory heat off Musk, including dismissing crash investigations into Tesla’s partially automated vehicles and a Justice Department criminal probe examining whether Musk and Tesla have overstated their cars’ self-driving capabilities.
Musk nonetheless insisted to Hannity, “I haven’t asked the president for anything, ever.” Trump said the billionaire “won’t be involved” in areas where his government efforts and business concerns overlap — though that seems dubious given that Musk’s team has already begun scrutinizing federal contracts in areas that would seem to present conflict-of-interest concerns.
Trump and Musk say they won’t turn on each other. But those once closest to Trump often end up as his fiercest critics.
His former vice president, Mike Pence, said Trump endangered his family in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol and attempted to bully him into violating the Constitution. His former attorney general, Bill Barr, refuted Trump’s falsehoods about widespread fraud in the 2020 election and has since said he “shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office.”
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