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Trump Reacts to Time Magazine Cover of Elon Musk Behind His White House Desk | Video
The magazine takes aim at the tech billionaire's growing influence on the government following the president's return to the Oval Office The post Trump Reacts to Time Magazine Cover of Elon Musk Behind His White House Desk | Video appeared first on TheWrap.
President Donald Trump gave a snarky yet nonchalant reaction to Time magazine’s latest cover, which features Elon Musk sitting behind his desk in the White House.
“Is Time magazine still in business, I didn’t even know that,” Trump said to reporters who asked if he had any response to the publication’s new image out Friday. At the time, Trump was holding a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
In the picture, Musk can be seen sitting at the Oval Office desk with what appears to be a cup of coffee in his hand.
The magazine’s Instagram caption read: “The standoff at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue was not much of a spectacle. On the first day of February, a handful of men working for Elon Musk had come to the U.S. Agency for International Development, a few blocks away from the White House, demanding full access to its headquarters. The agency’s staff refused.”
It continued, “No guns were drawn. No punches thrown. Nobody involved the police. But in these early days of the Trump Administration, perhaps no other scene revealed more clearly the forces reshaping America’s government.”
Brushing off the slick shade, Trump went on to praise Musk’s work as his head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“Elon is doing a great job. He’s finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste. You see it with the USAID, but you’re going to see it even more so with other agencies and other parts of government,” Trump said, adding that he wouldn’t mind bringing Musk to the podium one day to take questions from the press. “He’s got a staff that’s fantastic. He’s wanted to be able to do this for a long time, and everybody else knew it existed. But I think never so much, when you look at USAID, that’s a fraud. The whole thing is a fraud. Very little being put to good use. Every single line that I look at in terms of events and transactions is either corrupt or ridiculous.”
“And we’re going to be doing that throughout the government. And I think we’re going to be very close to balancing budgets for the first time in many years,” he continued. “I think we’re going to be very close to, in addition to, money’s coming in from tariffs, etc., etc., but, you know, he’s doing a very good job. I’m very happy with him.”
The magazine’s move comes after many have called out Musk’s extensive involvement in the U.S. government and its handling in the last three weeks. Musk, who donated nearly $250 million to Trump’s campaign, has led some of the major, drastic changes to the government since Trump re-entered the White House, including his promise to cut $2 trillion in federal spending and his push to fire longtime government agents from their roles.
The cover is especially ironic since Trump was previously named Time’s Person of the Year in 2020.
The post Trump Reacts to Time Magazine Cover of Elon Musk Behind His White House Desk | Video appeared first on TheWrap.
