“Morning Joe” panelists on Monday predicted when Donald Trump’s alliance with Elon Musk will fracture. (Watch the video below.)
The president-elect’s weekend speech reassuring that he was in charge, not Musk, showed he was feeling insecure, host Jonathan Lemire said. Trump gave a mostly lighthearted response to talk of Musk being the “shadow president.” Musk appeared to scuttle a bipartisan spending bill on his own by tweeting objections and threats to any Republican lawmaker who approved it. Trump joked that Musk couldn’t be president anyway because he wasn’t born in the United States.
“The fact that he had to point to the Constitution as an example of ‘Hey, no. Elon Musk actually can’t be president. He wasn’t born here’ shows you how much this is getting under his skin,” Lemire said.
The subject then turned to what it would take to break up their political bromance.
Panelist Sam Stein, a former HuffPost politics editor, suggested their bond is more out of convenience because Trump appreciates the wealth Musk devoted to his campaign and that he has the megaphone of X, which he owns, at his disposal.
But Trump won’t play second fiddle on the attention front, Stein assured.
“The problem is, of course, is that if Elon starts stealing his thunder, the spotlight, and it becomes apparent that Elon is actually more powerful than Trump, that will not go over very well for the president-elect, soon-to-be-president,” Stein said. “I think that’s when you start seeing friction between the two.”
Lemire riffed on the kind of moment that could prompt a breakup: “When the Time Magazine cover drops suggesting that Elon Musk is actually running the show, that may be it.”
Stein noted that Musk had mentioned on social media not wanting the Time Person of the Year cover that went to Trump this month.
“DOGE would have been done before it began, had that occurred,” Lemire joked, referring to the leadership post Trump assigned Musk in the new Department of Government Efficiency.
