Trump Insiders Tell Maggie Haberman Elon Musk Is ‘Useful Heat Shield’ — Until He Gets More Popular Than Trump
CNN commentator and New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman said her Trumpworkd sources tell her President Donald Trump views Elon Musk as a “useful heat shield” — and they expect that to continue unless Musk gets more popular than Trump.
On Thursday night’s edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, host Anderson Cooper asked Haberman — whose insights into Trump are informed by deep experience reporting on the subject and a network of Trumpworld sources — how the Trump-Musk bromance is going.
Haberman said she hears that Musk is considered useful — until he isn’t:
COOPER: I was talking with Kara Swisher the other night. She said at first she thought the president and Elon Musk, were destined to have some sort of falling out sooner than later. Now she thinks Musk has figured out how to be around the president for the long haul. What’s your sense of how that relationship is going and his role?
HABERMAN: Well, yeah, the long haul is long with Donald Trump until it isn’t long anymore.
It’s definitely true that Musk is in a better place with him now than at points during the transition, when Trump felt like he was around Mar-a-Lago too much. Now he’s actually doing things as opposed to just sort of, you know, being at the club and talking to people while Trump was having meetings and dinners.
Trump sees him as enacting things that Trump likes. I think what gets lost here too, Anderson, is how much political heat Elon Musk is absorbing. That really is for actions that Trump has authorized.
But Elon Musk has become the focus. And so, Trump and a lot of his advisers see Elon Musk as a useful heat shield. I think that if you start seeing as one of them said to me, Elon Musk’s popularity rising and Donald Trump’s falling, that may become when the long haul shortens.
COOPER: Interesting, Maggie Haberman thanks so much. We appreciate it.
HABERMAN: Thank you.
Watch above via Anderson Cooper 360.
