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Washington DC:
US President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk sat down for their first joint interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity during which the Republican and his adviser were full of praise for each other. The pair talked on various issues including Musk’s role as an advisor to the President and the White House’s stance on his influence.
Trump stressed that Musk wouldn’t be involved in any decisions involving his companies, which the South African-born billionaire seconded saying his primary role was to provide technological support to the President.
Elon Musk told Sean Hannity that he “hasn’t asked the president for anything ever,” seeking to reassure listeners that he would recuse himself from any political decisions that involved his companies. Musk’s companies, especially SpaceX hold many lucrative government contracts and work directly with the US space agency NASA.
Donald Trump also reiterated that Musk wouldn’t be involved in any decision-making saying he not allow him to work on government projects that conflicted with his work for his private companies.
Musk said those worried about his power as an unelected advisor to the president should be more concerned about the thousands of unelected federal employees in the government’s civilian workforce. “If the bureaucracy is fighting the will of the people and preventing the president from implementing what the people want, then what we live in is a bureaucracy, not a democracy,” he said.
Wearing a t-shirt that read “tech support,” the billionaire stressed that his primary role was to provide technological support to the president.
Trump praised Musk’s efficiency in executing executive orders, saying, “He gets the executive order done. There used to be signed executive orders, but no work got done. He and his genius team make sure they are executed.”
Musk also talked about his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (“DOGE”) and said that with it the Trump administration aims “to try to get a trillion dollars out of the deficit.”
“I think he’s going to find a trillion dollars,” Trump seconded, saying he believed it would only be a “small shortage of fraud, waste and abuse really in government spending.”
He also reassured voters saying social security would not be affected by the cuts, as he has often repeated, and that abolishing the Department of Education would send school control back to the states.
“Social Security won’t be touched, other than fraud or something – we’re going to find it’s going to be strengthened – but won’t be touched,” Trump said, adding, “Medicare, Medicaid, none of that stuff is going to be … it’s not going to be touchable.”
Hannity also asked the pair about the social media platform, X’s, recent $10m settlement with the president, a question which was dismissed by both Trump and Musk as unimportant.
“I left it up to the lawyers,” Musk said.
“I think it’s very low … I was looking to get much more money than that, so you gave him a discount,” Trump said.
