President Trump and billionaire sidekick Elon Musk on February 18, 2025, accused the liberal media of trying to divide them to thwart their shared political agenda. In their first joint TV interview, the first buddies insisted nothing can come between them and that the efforts to drive them to political splitsville were doomed to failure.
“It’s just so obvious. They’re so bad at it,” Trump said of the supposed campaign against his power partnership with the world’s richest man. “I used to think they were good at it. They’re actually bad at it.”
Fox News host Sean Hannity joined in the act, feeding easy answers to the two allies during the joint interview, which was set to air Tuesday evening.
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“They want a divorce,” Hannity said. “They want you to start hating each other.”
“That’s true,” Trump responded.
Musk chimed in by describing how some unnamed Democratic-leaning acquaintances simply could not accept his endorsement of Trump in the 2024 election.
“They call it Trump derangement syndrome. You don’t realize how real this is until you can’t reason with people,” Musk said, “It’s like they’ve become completely irrational.”
The Tesla and SpaceX mogul said his former friends acted like he “got shot with a dart in the jugular that contained methamphetamine and rabies” after he defended Trump.
Trump and Musk were pushing back on widespread chatter from both sides of the political spectrum that their political alliance could soon collapse, perhaps if Trump tires of Musk hogging the limelight or if his actions attract too much criticism.
Steve Bannon, a populist and Trump’s onetime White House political director, derided Musk as a “parasitic illegal immigrant” hours before the joint interview aired. “He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values or traditions,” Bannon told UnHerd, a right-wing British website.
Democrats and progressives have also slammed Musk, suggesting they believe he is a juicier political target than Trump himself, at least for now.
“Elon Musk, the richest guy in the world … will go after the programs that impact you,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) posted on X.
For now at least, Trump and Musk are brushing off the projections of turbulence in their political marriage of convenience.
They have both blamed the media for its criticism of Musk’s key role in seeking to cut trillions from the federal budget as the de facto chief of the newly established Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
—Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News (TNS)
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