The United States President-elect Donald Trump has pushed back on the notion that he has “ceded the presidency” to billionaire Elon Musk, who has taken an outsized role in the president-elect’s transition into the White House, reports Al Jazeera.
Trump made the comments during a speech in Arizona on Sunday, days after the Tesla and SpaceX owner intervened alongside the president-elect to scuttle a budget bill negotiated in Congress.
The incident was the latest in which Musk has taken an atypically large role in the incoming Trump administration, prompting criticism from Democrats and from within Trump’s own Republican party.
Directly addressing those criticisms for the first time, Trump praised Musk, before adding: “And no, he’s not taking the presidency.”
Trump further called the suggestion that he has “ceded the presidency to Elon Musk” another “hoax” pushed by his political opponents.
In a later quip, Trump noted that there is no risk of Musk officially taking over as president because he would be constitutionally barred from doing so.
“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 world’s richest person according to Forbes Magazine – became one of Trump’s biggest supporters in the run-up to the election, endorsing the president-elect in July following an assassination attempt and pumping an estimated $200m into a Political Action Committee (PAC) supporting Trump.
He has since been tapped by Trump to lead a proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked with taking a slash-and-burn approach to federal government spending.
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
