President Donald Trump and Elon Musk told Fox News host Sean Hannity that they believe media outlets are trying to drive a wedge between them.
Trump and the world’s richest man, who is spearheading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s sweeping layoffs across the federal workforce, sat down with Hannity last week in an interview that will air on the network Tuesday.
In a preview, Hannity tells them that the media — namely The New York Times, The Washington Post, and late-night variety shows, according to the Fox anchor — “want you two to start hating each other.”
“They want a divorce,” Hannity said. “And they try all, ‘President Elon Musk’, for example. You do know that they're doing that to you?”
Trump revealed that the speculation over their relationship prompted the Tesla CEO to call him.
“Actually, Elon called me. He said, ‘You know they're trying to drive us apart,’” Trump recalled. “I said, ‘Absolutely.’”
Trump did most of the talking during the minute-long preview while Musk nodded along with the president. He laughed when Trump mentioned media reports that referred to the billionaire as “President Musk.”
“It’s just so obvious. They're so bad at it,” Trump said. “I used to think they were good at it. They're actually bad at it, because if they were good at it, I'd never be president.”
“You know what I have learned, Elon, the people are smart. They get it. Yeah, they get it, they really see what's happening to us,” Trump added.
Musk recently posted on X that he loved Trump “as much as any straight man could.”
But pundits have speculated that the bromance between the two billionaires will come crashing down eventually.
“The Trump Show is a one-man play,” Politico’s senior political columnist Jonathan Martin wrote earlier this month. “And there’s not room for anybody else, least of all somebody wealthier and with a (nearly) comparable thirst for attention.”
In the Oval Office last week, Musk took center stage during a bizarre press conference where he brought his four-year-old son to witness the signing of an executive order that handed even more power to the SpaceX and Tesla CEO.
MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell mocked Trump over the optics and claimed it delivered “a picture of presidential subservience the likes of which we have never seen.”
Calling it the “most powerless image of a president of the United States ever created by a camera,” the Last Word host pointed to a photo of Musk holding his son on his shoulders as a seemingly sullen Trump glowered at his desk while aides Stephen Miller and Will Scharf stood off to the side.
“There it is. In that shot, Elon Musk is doing everything he possibly can to tell the world, without saying a word, that Donald Trump is not the boss of me,” O’Donnell declared. “Donald Trump is the boss of the other adults in that shot, Stephen Miller and Will Scharf.”
The full interview will air February 18.
