While Donald Trump and Elon Musk have established a seedy bromance, things might be changing with the latest cover of Time Magazine that shows Elon Musk sitting behind the desk at the Oval Office.
A lot of attention has already been garnered because of Musk’s heavy involvement in political matters despite him being a businessman and having no direct ties with American politics. With the Time Magazine cover being this blatant, questions of who actually is ruling America are bound to surface.
The same thing seems to have bothered Trump to a great degree as was shown by his response to the questions asked by journalists during his meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba. When the reporters asked him if he had any reaction to the Time Magazine cover, Trump answered with a simple “No” and then added, “Is Time Magazine still in business? I didn’t even know that.”
Reporter: Mr. President, do you have a reaction to the new time magazine cover that has Elon Musk sitting behind your resolute desk at time magazine?
Trump: No… Is Time magazine still in business? I didn’t even know that. pic.twitter.com/ity2kJ4dKj
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 7, 2025
As reported by The List, Traci Brown, CSP, a body language expert, observed that Trump’s words are not really conveying his feelings. She said, What we’re seeing from Trump is contempt and disappointment. His mouth goes momentarily crooked — that’s the contempt — and he pulls that same cornerback. That’s a disappointment.”
She further added, that Trump is trying to cover up his feeling of disappointment with what he considers to be an insult. This is not really a new move on Trump’s part as he has done so on previous occasions as well and in general also human beings try to do that when they do not want to show what they are really feeling.
Moreover, the fact that Trump seemed so oblivious to Time Magazine’s existence seems a little unbelievable since he was almost obsessed with the magazine while holding the magazine’s cover in high regard and mocking fake ones that had featured him.
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In 2017 during his presidential run, the Time did a cover featuring Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s advisor, and the copy was headlined, The Great Manipulator. This certainly did not please Trump and his advisor was out of the White House after a while.
For someone who has been this influenced by a particular magazine even a few years back is very unlikely to know whether it’s in business or not and what exactly is on its cover and therefore his reaction only brings out his insecurity.
With this Time Magazine cover story captioned Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington it is very obvious how Trump is letting Musk get more and more involved with how things run inside the American parliament. This could have easily ignited jealousy, which it did not. Trump felt disappointed, but not jealous, Brown confirmed.
Musk also did not remain silent on the whole thing and only after a few hours the issue came out, he posted “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man.” This essentially shows Musk’s eagerness to be on Trump’s good books and attempts at not letting a magazine cover come between them.
I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2025
It now remains to be seen how much this cover brothers Trump, if it does at all, and what will be his subsequent strategy of action to answer stories like these.
