Elon Musk may be the richest person in the world, CEO of the most overvalued car company in the world and was rumored to functionally be Trump’s co-President. Yet, despite all of his financial success, he’s never been able to escape one simple truth: He is a deeply unlikable person. He can blame it on his reportedly self-diagnosed autism, but no one wants to be his friend including the Trump team, apparently, with some members telling the Daily Beast he’s the “guest who wouldn’t leave.”
It’s understandable that Musk wouldn’t want to go home. Home is where the loneliness is. Home is where the emptiness sets in again, and he remembers he’ll never be rich enough to afford real friends. At least at Mar-a-Lago, he can force other people to listen to his nonsensical ideas and help him keep the sadness at bay. So it makes sense that he’s reportedly barely left Trump’s country club since election night.
The fact that Musk is already getting on other people’s nerves doesn’t mean that he isn’t still basically Trump’s co-President. As CNN’s Kaitlyn Collins reported Sunday:
Musk has been in the room when world leaders have called, and tonight we have learned he’s also weighing in on staffing decisions, making clear his preference for certain roles even.
While Musk himself is still not expected to take any kind of formal position inside Trump’s administration, given how complicated it would be with his companies, what’s becoming clearer tonight is that he doesn’t really need to. One source told me, Elon Musk is having just as much influence from the outside.
Other folks have reportedly received calls complaining about Musk’s presence, including tech access journalist Kara Swisher. Swisher told CNN, “He definitely inserts himself all the time, that’s his style. I’ve heard from Trump people, calling me saying, ‘Oh, wow. This is odd’. And it is.”
Swisher, who has famously never been wrong about Musk in the past, reportedly isn’t worried that Trump and Musk will last long as a team. “They’re both narcissists, and there can be only one narcissist as head of the country, and that’s Donald Trump. Trump goes through people like tissues, essentially. And even if it’s Musk, they’re going to clash at some point.”
We’ll check back in a few months to see how that prediction works out. For all we know, Trump could be the only person in the world who can stand to be around Musk for an extended period of time.