Elon Musk is hoping to dispel the widely circulating notion that he, not President-elect Trump, is really calling the shots.
On Thursday, X user Lulu Cheng Meservey called such speculations indicative of a wider “strategy” to sow discord between Musk and Trump. “By jabbing Trump about not being the alpha, the idea is to provoke him to sideline Elon and to fray the relationship,” Meservey wrote.
Musk agreed, writing in a quote-tweet Friday, “The political & legacy media puppets all got their new instructions yesterday and are now parroting the same message to drive a wedge between [Trump] and me. They will fail.”
The “President Musk” rhetoric began after the billionaire, whose financial support for Trump and other Republican candidates made him 2024’s biggest political donor, helped tank a bipartisan spending bill. Musk unleashed a fusillade of criticism on his social media platform, X, as well as a threat to fund primary challenges against representatives who voted to pass the deal.
Later that day, President-elect Trump came out against the deal, and after a failed vote on a revised bill Thursday, House Republicans are scrambling to put together an eleventh-hour plan to avoid a government shutdown.
Musk has since tried to shift blame and downplay his role in the outcome. He’s also apparently hoping to shut down Democrats’ suggestions that his outsize role in the legislative process indicates that he’s the one truly pulling the strings in the incoming Trump administration.
Many Democrats leapt on the events of the week to say just that: “The leader of the GOP is Elon Musk,” tweeted Representative Brendan Boyle. “I don’t know why Trump doesn’t just hand him the Oval Office,” said Representative Greg Cesar. “It’s clear who’s in charge, and it’s not President-elect Donald Trump,” posted Pramila Jayapal, saying Trump followed the lead of “Shadow President Elon Musk.” (Jayapal’s were the comments that specifically drew Meservey’s, and in turn Musk’s, ire.)
Whatever the state of Musk and Trump’s relationship after the world’s wealthiest man flexed his political muscles this week, the notion that Musk is delivering marching orders seems to have struck a nerve with team Trump. On Thursday, a Trump spokesperson insisted that the president-elect, and no one else, was in charge, saying, “President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Full stop.”