Trump pushes back on 'President Musk' claims
President-elect Trump on Sunday rejected the recent dubbing of tech billionaire Elon Musk as “President Musk” by Democrats.
“No, he’s not gonna be president, that I can tell you,” Trump said at conservative group Turning Point’s “America Fest” in Phoenix, Ariz. “And I’m safe, you know why? He can’t be, he wasn’t born in this country.”
Democratic leaders have recently implied that the tech billionaire is the “real leader” of the GOP in the wake of Musk’s hard-line campaign opposing a stopgap spending measure.
In the last week, Musk railed against the stopgap measure on social media, with the president-elect following him in his disapproval of the deal negotiated by strong Trump ally House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)
“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Musk said Wednesday on the social platform X, which he owns.
At “America Fest,” Trump said Musk “went to Pennsylvania, and he stayed — stayed up there for a month, and helped us to win that state, which we won by a lot.”
“So he was really good,” Trump added.
Trump said last month that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would serve as the heads of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) panel, which aims to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures” and “restructure federal agencies.”
DOGE will “provide advice and guidance from outside of government” and work alongside the White House Office of Management and Budget, the president-elect said.
“It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” Trump added. “Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time.”
The Hill has reached out to Tesla, Musk’s electric car company, for comment.