President-elect Donald Trump shot down any talk that he’s being overshadowed by Elon Musk, especially after Musk played a role in throwing a wrench into an emergency spending plan to prevent a government shutdown.
Trump called the idea that he’s “ceded the presidency” to Musk pure fiction, adding that even if Musk had ambitions for the role, he wouldn’t be able to step in due to the Constitution’s requirement that the U.S. president be a natural-born citizen. “No, he’s not going to be president, that I can tell you,” Trump said. “And I’m safe. You know why he can’t be? He wasn’t born in this country.”
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Trump’s latest comments were made on Sunday at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference in Phoenix.
Democratic leaders are suggesting that the tech billionaire is the true heavyweight in the GOP, especially after his fierce stance against that temporary spending plan.
In the past week, Musk took to social media to voice his strong opposition to the stopgap measure, and the president-elect jumped on the bandwagon, echoing his discontent with the deal brokered by House Speaker Mike Johnson, a close ally of Trump.
“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.
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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.
Last month, Trump announced that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would take the reins of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) panel. Their mission? To trim down unnecessary regulations, eliminate wasteful spending, and shake up federal agencies for a more streamlined government.
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.”
