President-elect Donald Trump has been complaining about his “first buddy” Elon Musk behind closed doors, according to a reporter.
Trump and Musk have become close in recent months, with the tech billionaire reportedly staying at a cottage just a few hundred feet away from the main house at Mar-a-Lago. Trump also tapped Musk to co-head the newly created Department of Government Efficiency.
But there appears to be trouble in paradise, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.
“Trump does complain a bit to people about how Musk is around a lot,” New York Times journalist said on the podcast “On with Kara Swisher” on Monday.
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“Musk has been a major donor to Trump this campaign cycle and he’s sort of tied into various areas around Trump which makes things more complicated,” she said. Musk donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to Trump’s campaign.
“Musk seems more willing to irritate Trump than a lot of other people have been and less concerned about what it might mean.
“It’s a fraught relationship and has potential for becoming even more so,” she said.
The pair became so close that some dubbed the Tesla CEO “President Musk.” But the president-elect swiftly addressed that during a speech in Arizona last month: “No, he’s not taking the presidency…That’s not happening.”
Asked about how Trump reacted to the “President Musk” line, Haberman said it “definitely bothers him.” She continued: “Trump’s not a wind-up toy but there certainly are very specific things that can zotz him.”
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But she predicted that once Trump takes office, “this is going to change a little bit.”
“I don’t anticipate that Musk is going to have an office in the West Wing” or have a pass to walk freely in the White House, she said.
“Trump keeps people around for a long time if they are of use to him and he almost never totally closes the door to somebody,” whether they are rich or not, Haberman added. But, “Musk comes with something that ‘president [Steve] Bannon’ did not, which is a lot of money, and I think that buys him a lot of time.”
She added that others in his inner circle are “struggling with how aggressive Musk can be in their interactions.” But she believed that they wouldn’t admit that publicly.
Musk is “influential” to Trump but is not his most influential adviser, she said. Susie Wiles and Stephen Miller take that title, according to Haberman.
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Haberman’s report comes after anonymous sources told Mediaite that Trump was “annoyed” with Musk’s omnipresence shortly after he engaged in a so-called “civil war” with some of Trump’s prominent MAGA allies over H-1B visas.
“100 percent Trump is annoyed,” a source who worked on Trump’s re-election campaign told the outlet last month. “There’s a Chinese saying: ‘two tigers cannot live on one mountaintop.’”
Another source said: “There was likely an allure to it in the beginning but it seemed like it could go ugly…Trump is Trump. I think it’s just the way Trump is. Someone that is around that much and having influence would be a bother.”
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