Mapping the internecine warfare in and out of the Oval Office.
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On February 13 Newsweek published a bemused explainer of a video that had quickly gone viral under the banner “What did Elon Musk’s son say to Trump?”
In the video, a black-clad Musk, holding forth on erroneously perceived government waste, stands imposingly in the Oval Office, towering over Trump, who is hunkered down sullenly at his desk. While Musk talks, an apparently humiliated Trump unhappily deals with Musk’s voluble 4-year-old son, X (formally X-Æ A-Xii.)
It’s a strange scene, to begin with: a billionaire who feels free to bring a rambunctious child with him to media opportunities in the Oval Office. But the purported exchange between the child and the president seems even more extraordinary.
The four-year-old can be heard whispering (rather loudly) to a silent, glum Trump. We’re not sure, but, from the audio, he seems to be saying, among other things:
I want you to shush your mouth.
Even while on his father’s shoulders, he turns to Trump and continues to say “Shhh!” And, again, says “Shush your mouth.” Here is one video that seems to show all this. (Unfortunately, the producers add music and captions.)
So why is this worth a deep-dive into political tea-leaf reading?
https://twitter.com/sleezepetty/status/1889868079766839609?s=46
Children typically parrot what they hear from adults, and it is telling how much latitude X is given in front of cameras with the president.
While the visuals of Musk and even his son running roughshod over Trump in front of the press pool were shocking, that Newsweek raised an eyebrow at the curious incident points to some intriguing divisions within Trumpworld.
According to The Daily Beast, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is close to the owners of Newsweek, which long since moved rightwards away from its status as a centrist, establishment outlet. It’s possible that Kushner — now outside of the Beltway action, with his role as special envoy to the Middle East given to developer Steve Witkoff — is stewing about his apparent distance from power. And he may be sending a message to Trump and his staff, through a friendly mouthpiece, that the optics of the president’s relationship with Musk is embarrassing.
Two weeks ago Time magazine, an outlet whose cover-space Trump famously reveres for its one-time outsized cultural influence, placed a mock-up of Musk, set against a rich red background, behind the president’s Resolute Desk.
Asked by a reporter about the provocative image, Trump waved it away, saying, “Is Time magazine even in business anymore?” adding, “Elon is doing a great job.”
But the president’s morose body language and facial expressions in the Musk video belied his insouciant air.
It’s been weeks now since the “President Musk” and “co-president” memes have emerged, a commentary on what is, in American terms, an arrangement of unparalleled closeness between a non-elected plutocrat and a sitting president.
Less than a hundred days into the new administration, it is accepted that Musk wields tremendous power, especially on the domestic front. It is an extraordinary development, and while on the surface Trump remains placid, he seems to visibly retreat — even shrink — in the presence of Musk.
Trump’s treatment of Musk’s rapid accession is starkly contrasted with his historically thin-skinned approach to any politico who threatened to steal his spotlight. Steve Bannon’s speedy removal from a specially created role of White House “senior counselor” was widely attributed to his being lauded by the press as the brains behind Trump’s surprise 2016 victory.
Incidentally, Bannon, who represents the “populist” wing of MAGA, has declared all-out war on Musk, calling him “truly evil.” “Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant,” he said during a pre-election interview with the website UnHerd. “He wants to impose his freak experiment and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, tradition or values.” After the election, Bannon boldly but fatuously promised to have Musk out of Trump’s orbit by “Inauguration Day.”
To be sure, historically, Ivanka and Jared did not like Bannon, but the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” and the sharp knives are missing from their drawer.
Other Trump appointees and advisors who found disfavor for casting too large a shadow during his first term include ex-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and early campaign staffer Corey Lewandowski.
Perhaps Trump is determined to remain stolid in the face of media provocations this time around, but his financial dependence on the tremendously rich Musk is a much more satisfying explanation of Trump’s acquiescence.
At $288 million, Musk was Trump’s largest political donor last year and the social media boost that Musk’s X platform gave the Trump campaign was probably worth multiples of that.
We also should not forget Trump’s hat tip to Musk, after the president’s surprising sweep of all seven swing states, for “[knowing] those counting computers better than anybody. … Those vote-counting computers.” Last week Musk even promised to pony up $10 million to pay Trump’s January 6 legal bills.
This all begs the question: Did the two cut some sort deal and create a partnership before Trump was elected?
While Kushner has not had the visibility or acknowledged “ear of power” since Trump regained the presidency, last year he floated an ill-conceived plan to develop Gaza as a seaside resort while ethnically cleansing its native Palestinian population — very much like the scheme Trump recently spoke of during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner told an interviewer back in 2024. He added, “I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” as if it were a mere matter of gentrifying a few blocks of lower Manhattan (where he has developed property).
As amplified by Trump, and praised by a smirking Netanyahu, on February 4, this “proposal” elicited a statement of damning disapproval from the “shocked” Saudis — who were being publicly telegraphed, along with Qatar, as the source of the scheme’s funding. Denunciations from Jordan and Egypt, slated as the countries that would absorb the forced transfer of millions of Gazans, quickly followed.
Meanwhile, Trump’s apparent adoption of the Gaza-as-the-Riviera-of-the-Middle-East scheme may actually have angered Kushner, whose close ties to the Saudi crown prince have made him very rich and who may not look kindly on anyone (including his dad-in-law) poaching on his marked-out “sphere of influence.”
The crazy-seeming Gaza proposal — which would turn responsibility for the devastated territory and its suffering population over to the US — would also be a godsend to the Israeli right, whose long-term goal has been to literally purge the Palestinians from the territory, an act at odds with any semblance of international order.
Meanwhile, in the last hours, we see growing expressions of (polite) frustration with Trump in some GOP circles — notably among senators who are struggling to understand Trump’s vision for them — and chaos between the House and Senate.
Somehow, the disturbing image of Musk running roughshod over the government and over Trump himself has not quite triggered a conscious public debate about exactly what is going on.
Trump’s roll-over for Putin this week in basically embracing the Russian’s view of Ukraine, and to an extent of NATO itself, raises further questions about who controls whom, and who is intimidated by whom. To be sure, Trump said that Ukraine started the war and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is a dictator. (To understand Trump’s grudge against Ukraine, recall his failed attempts to get Ukraine to implicate the Bidens in corruption.)
Trump’s closeness with Putin is well known and long predated Zelenskyy’s election.
Related: Why FBI Can’t Tell All on Trump, Russia; Trump Serves a Powerful Reminder That Putin Owns Him
Another possible thread in this mix of internal schemes and counter-schemes is Trump’s oddly hedged response to a question from Fox News’s Bret Baier about whether Vice President JD Vance was his natural successor:
“No, but he’s very capable. I think you have a lot of very capable people. So far I think he’s doing a fantastic job,” Trump said, adding, “It’s too early. We’re just starting.”
Vance, in turn, is known as a protege of Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire and behind-the-scenes power broker. Surely, Vance can’t be thrilled about Musk’s power and visibility, which far eclipse his own. This is further complicated by the complex relationship between Thiel and Musk, whom Thiel forced out of Paypal, the digital payments company he co-founded, over Musk’s chaos-generating shenanigans.
Vance’s extreme speeches and intrusive behavior in Europe surely got Trump’s attention, and perhaps this helped erase any doubts Trump had about the loyalty of Vance, once a never-Trumper who, in a 2016 text to a friend, called Trump “America’s Hitler.”
Without the kind of leaks to the media that plagued Trump’s first administration, the push and pull between competing factions in the White House can only be gleaned from clues. What is clear is that by any metric, on the domestic front, Musk is now front and center, seemingly wielding the lion’s share of power as he tears apart the very fabric of the American system of governance.
Trump could “fire Musk” — perhaps — though we don’t really know the precise nature of their strange arrangement. Meantime, he appears only able to watch and cringe and issue occasional statements and play golf. If that continues, his “crazy machine” may just leave him behind.
