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US President Donald Trump has rejected the idea that he has “ceded the presidency” to billionaire Elon Musk, who has taken on an outsize role in the president-elect’s transition to the White House.
Trump made the comments during a speech in Arizona on Sunday, days after the owner of Tesla and SpaceX intervened with the president-elect to scuttle a budget bill negotiated in Congress.
The incident was the latest in which Musk took on an uncharacteristically large role in the incoming Trump administration, drawing criticism from Democrats and within Trump’s own Republican Party.
Addressing those criticisms directly for the first time, Trump praised Musk, before adding: “And no, he’s not taking over the presidency.”
Trump also called the suggestion that he has “ceded the presidency to Elon Musk” another “hoax” pushed by his political opponents.
In a later joke, Trump noted that there is no risk of Musk officially assuming the presidency because the Constitution would prohibit him from doing so.
“Do you know why he can’t be (president)?” Trump asked the crowd in Arizona. “He was not born in this country.”
Musk, born in South Africa and the richest person in the world according to Forbes magazine, became one of Trump’s biggest supporters in the run-up to the election, backing the president-elect in July after an assassination attempt and injecting about 200 million dollars in a Political Action Committee (PAC) supporting Trump.
Trump has since tapped him to lead a proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked with taking a slash-and-burn approach to federal government spending.
The so-called “department” has been presented as an independent advisory panel, not an official government agency, and its remit remains undefined.
Intervention in the budget agreement
Trump’s comments come a day after outgoing US President Joe Biden signed a funding bill into law that averts a government shutdown.
The previous bill negotiated by members of both parties in Congress was torpedoed days earlier when Trump came out against it.
The president-elect’s main argument was that the bill did not raise the debt ceiling, a political fight Trump hoped to avoid before taking office in January. The debt ceiling is the United States’ borrowing limit, a limit imposed by Congress on how much money the government can borrow to cover the gap between its revenues and expenses.
Musk also spoke out against the deal, which he criticized in a flurry of tweets on the social media platform X, which he also owns. He pledged to financially support major challenges to lawmakers who supported the original legislation.
House Speaker Mike Johnson later told US media that he spoke by phone with both Trump and Musk while a new bill was being renegotiated.
The final bill, which funds the US government at the current rate through March 14, gutted several provisions that Trump and Musk opposed. However, the final version did not raise the debt ceiling amid opposition from a group of Republican lawmakers.
Speaking to CNN, Republican lawmaker Rich McCormick said Musk’s intervention showed that “he has influence and will pressure us to do what he believes is right for him.”
Other Republicans have been more tolerant, with Rep. Tony Gonzales saying in an interview on CBS that “it seems like Elon Musk is our prime minister.”
Speaking on CNN, Senator Bill Hagerty praised Musk’s role in negotiating the bill, while rejecting the idea that the billionaire was driving Trump’s decisions.
“Extremely alarming”
Beyond the budget deal, Musk’s regular presence alongside Trump before he takes office on Jan. 20 has caused concern among Democrats for weeks.
The billionaire was on the call when Trump spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following his election victory. He was also present at recent meetings with French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in New York.
Criticism has been sparked by memes on social media showing Trump bowing to Musk in various settings.
Following last week’s budget negotiations, several Democrats accused Musk of intervening to serve his own interests.
They noted their support for removing a provision from the original bill that could have limited their business operations in China.
“It is extremely alarming that House Republican leadership, at the behest of an unelected billionaire, scrapped a negotiated bipartisan, bicameral funding deal that included this critical provision to protect American jobs and critical capabilities,” he wrote. Rep. Rosa DeLauro in a letter to congressional leaders. on Friday.
