The President and the billionaire tech mogul grew closer over Trump’s campaign trial in 2024, ultimately bagging Musk a spot as a special government employee in the Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Now, the 78-year-old Republican has put rumors to bed that the pair have fallen out.
In a sneak peek interview between the pair with Sean Hannity on Fox News that is yet to air, the reporter said the ‘media’ ran a ‘weaponization’ campaign against the POTUS but that Trump’s re-election ‘prove[s] that they have no power anymore’.
In a sneak peek interview between the pair with Sean Hannity on Fox News that is yet to air, the reporter said the ‘media’ ran a ‘weaponization’ campaign against the POTUS but that Trump’s re-election ‘prove[s] that they have no power anymore’.
The journalist name dropped the New York Times and The Washington Post as well as cable news for ‘throwing everything’ at Trump during the campaign.
“Now I see they want you two to start – they want a divorce. They want you two to start hating each other,” Hannity continued. “President Elon Musk, for example.”
Trump replied: “Oh I see it all the time.”
“[The media] have many different things of hatred. Actually, Elon called me, he said: ‘You know they are trying to drive us apart?’ I said: ‘Absolutely’.”
Trump joked about the ‘President Musk’ jibes and his friend calling a cabinet meeting, to which Musk laughed.
“I said it is just so obvious,” the president continued. “They are so bad at it. I used to think they were good at it but they are actually bad at it because if they were good at it, I’d never be president.”
Trump went on to say he believes no other president ‘in history’ has got ‘more bad publicity than me’.
“I could do the greatest things – I get 98 percent bad publicity,” he said before praising Hannity and his colleagues at Fox News, which is currently investigating alleged media bias from other networks.
Trump also said that the people ‘get it’ and can see ‘what is happening’ while the Tesla CEO agreed.
The bombshell interview comes after a Reuters piece reported on an alleged conflict between Musk’s DOGE and Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles.
Trump and Musk haven’t always had a rosy relationship either, from public disagreements to insulting words being exchanged on both sides.
In 2016, Musk said that his future buddy was ‘not the right guy’ to take over the White House.
A year later, he resigned from presidential advisory boards and slammed the POTUS for leaving the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Fast forward five years, their friendship was seemingly back on track after Trump described the SpaceX CEO as one of the world’s ‘greatest geniuses’. But he then backtracked six months later, referring to the South African as a ‘bulls*** artist’ when Musk revealed his intentions to buy Twitter.
Musk snapped back: “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”
Despite the spat, Musk reinstated Trump’s Twitter account and, by the end of 2023, appeared sympathetic to some of his policies – namely the US border wall with Mexico – before donating $45 million a month to a new pro-Trump Super PAC in the summer of 2024.
In August that year, Musk and Trump teased the Twitter owner could be head of a new ‘government efficiency’ group and in the fall, Trump went to Texas to witness SpaceX’s starship launch.
Media reports indicate that the pair spend ‘almost every day together’ with Musk calling himself ‘First Buddy’.
