Donald Trump wastes no time criticizing some of his main allies, including Elon Musk.

In his first meeting with Republican lawmakers on the Hill as president-elect, Trump asserted his power over Muskmocking the tech billionaire for staying so long.

“Elon is not going home. I can’t get rid of him,” Trump said Wednesday. “Until I don’t love him anymore.”

The world’s richest man reportedly spent “nearly every day” of the past week at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, Florida property, according to CNN. Musk has been spotted playing golf with the president-elect, dining with him and his wife, Melania, and has even been in the room while Trump calls world leaders. jump on calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell argued that Trump’s comments about Musk were an assertion of his dominance, played out in front of a room that must play the game.

“Everyone laughed.” said O’Donnell. “They laughed that uncomfortable laugh. But they laugh when Donald Trump makes a joke about a member of his team, a joke that everyone knows is true, a joke that paints him as pathetic, as Donald Trump’s personal sense of superiority demands. »

O’Donnell also suggested that Musk’s new role in government – co-leading a new agency, the Ministry of Government Effectivenessotherwise known as “DOGE”, is basically a joke in itself, with Musk’s responsibilities amounting to a “fake job” with little more power than that of a K Street lobbyist.

Musk will likely benefit from his extended stay with the president-elect, whose opinion is influenced by the last person he interacted with. But, according to tech journalist Kara Swisher, the relationship between the two imaginary strongmen is destined to flare up.

“They’re both narcissists, and there can only be one narcissist running the country, and that’s Donald Trump who just won the election,” Swisher said Monday. “You know he owes things to Elon, but at some point, you know, if he gets too much attention, think about Steve Bannon. You remember he was on the cover of this magazineand how quickly he got out of it, even though he had been a critic in Trump’s first campaign and he was right in the middle of the White House, and then he wasn’t.

“Trump goes through people like handkerchiefs, basically,” Swisher noted. “And even if it’s Musk, they’re going to clash at some point.”