US President Donald Trump has rejected the idea that he has “ceded the presidency to a billionaire”. Elon Muskwho played an outsized 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 Tesla and SpaceX owner intervened on the president-elect’s side sink a budget bill negotiated in Congress.
The incident was the latest in which Musk took an uncharacteristically large role in the new Trump administration, drawing criticism from Democrats and within Trump’s own Republican Party.
Trump addressed this criticism directly for the first time, praising Musk before adding: “And no, he’s not taking over the presidency.”
Trump called the claim that he had “ceded the presidency to Elon Musk” another “hoax” by his political opponents.
In a later joke, Trump noted that there was no danger of Musk officially taking over as president because he was constitutionally barred from doing so.
“Do you know why he can’t be (president)?” Trump asked the crowd in Arizona. “He wasn’t born in this country.”
The South African-born Musk – 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 pumping an estimated $200 million into a political action committee ( PAC) supports Trump.
He has since been tapped by Trump to lead a proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked with taking a radical approach to federal spending.
The so-called “department” was touted as an independent advisory body rather than an official government agency, and its purview remains unclear.
Budget Deal Intervention
Trump’s comments come a day after outgoing US President Joe Biden signed a funding law This prevents a government shutdown.
The previous bill, negotiated by members of both parties in Congress, was torpedoed days earlier when Trump ran in opposition.
The president-elect’s main argument was that the bill did not raise the debt ceiling – a political dispute that Trump wanted to avoid before taking office in January. The debt ceiling is the U.S. borrowing limit, a limit set by Congress on how much money the government can borrow to close the gap between its revenue and spending.
Musk had also spoken out against the deal, which he criticized in a flood of tweets on the social media platform X, which he also owns. He promised to provide funding to primary challenges to lawmakers who supported the original legislation.
House Speaker Mike Johnson later told US media he had spoken on the phone with both Trump and Musk while a new bill was being renegotiated.
The final bill – which funds the US government at current levels through March 14 – removed several provisions that Trump and Musk had opposed. However, the final version did not raise the debt ceiling, despite protests from a cadre of Republican lawmakers.
Speaking to CNN, Republican Rep. Rich McCormick said Musk’s intervention shows “he has influence and he’s going to put pressure on us to do what he thinks is right for him.”
Other Republicans were more responsive, with Rep. Tony Gonzales saying in an interview on CBS that it “feels like Elon Musk is our prime minister.”
Speaking on CNN, Senator Bill Hagerty praised Musk’s role in negotiating the bill but dismissed the idea that the billionaire drove Trump’s decisions.
“Extremely alarming”
Beyond the budget deal, Musks regular attendance At Trump’s side before his inauguration on January 20th, there has been unrest among the Democrats for weeks.
The billionaire was a guest when Trump spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after his election victory. He was also present at recent meetings with French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in New York.
The criticism was sparked by social media memes showing Trump kowtowing to Musk in various situations.
After budget negotiations last week, several Democrats accused Musk of intervening to further his own interests.
They pointed to his support for removing a provision in the original bill that could have restricted his companies’ operations in China.
“It is extremely alarming that House Republican leadership, at the urging of an unelected billionaire, abandoned a bipartisan, bicameral negotiated funding agreement that included this important provision to protect American jobs and critical skills,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro wrote in a letter to congressional leaders on Friday.
