Trump addresses Elon Musk's growing political influence: 'He's not going to be president'
President-elect Donald Trump dismissed any suggestion that he’s being usurped by his high-profile billionaire ally Elon Musk during a speech at AmericaFest.
PHOENIX — President-elect Donald Trump dismissed any suggestion that he’s being usurped by his high-profile billionaire ally Elon Musk, coming off a week in which Musk helped derail an emergency spending measure to avert a government shutdown.
Trump said the notion that he has “ceded the presidency” to Musk is a fiction and that even if Musk wanted the job, he couldn’t get it because of the Constitution’s requirement that the U.S. president be a natural-born citizen. Musk was born in South Africa.
“No, he’s not going to be president, that I can tell you,” Trump said. “And I’m safe. You know why he can’t be? He wasn’t born in this country.”
Trump spoke for more than an hour Sunday at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference in Phoenix, with thousands of conservative activists cheering wildly as he took the stage amid a pyrotechnic display. It was his first rally-style event since the election.
Smoke curled around the lectern and sparklers shot up from the floor as the crowd stood and cheered the incoming president, who wore his trademark suit and overlong red tie.
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