For more than 30 minutes on Fox News on Tuesday night, President Trump and Elon Musk spoke effusively and at length about their relationship.
“I love the president,” Mr. Musk declared straightaway. “I just want to be clear about that.” And for the next half-hour, he was. The president, for his part, described Mr. Musk as “a great person,” “an amazing person,” “a caring person” and “a brilliant guy.” They laughed at each other’s jokes. They practically finished each other’s sentences.
But the interview was fascinating for all the things they did not say.
There is a lot more going on beneath the surface of what was presented on Tuesday night. Together, these two men are testing the bounds of the law and the Constitution. Mr. Musk is marauding through the Defense and Agriculture Departments, the national parks and the Federal Aviation Administration. And what does it actually mean that the richest man in the world is now a subcontractor for the most powerful man in the world? None of this was discussed in any substantive way.
The interview was mainly about how much they dig each other. Which does matter, because the longer they stick together — the longer one allows the other to continue on his march through Washington — the more the effects will ripple out to the country and the world.
The Fox News host Sean Hannity pointed out that their foes in the media and in Washington “want a divorce.”
“They want you two to start hating each other,” Mr. Hannity continued. “And they try.”
They do try. Democrats taunt Mr. Trump by referring to “President Musk.” Time magazine mocked up an image of the tech mogul sitting behind the Resolute Desk and put it on the cover. The president was annoyed by all this — but he was also determined not to let himself be played.
“It’s just so obvious,” he said in the interview. “They’re so bad at it. I used to think they were good at it.” He said Mr. Musk actually called him to say, “You know they’re trying to drive us apart.”
Evidently it will take more than a magazine cover to do that.
If the president is at all bothered that he is having to answer for Mr. Musk’s business entanglements, or that Mr. Musk was photographed having his own meeting with the prime minister of India when he came to Washington last week, he did not show it.
It was captivating to see them relate to each other — the 78-year-old real estate developer from Queens who still cares about Time magazine and the 53-year-old tech engineer from South Africa who is obsessed with video games, artificial intelligence and getting to Mars. They seemed more comfortable with each other than ever before.
“He’s got tremendous imagination and scientific imagination,” Mr. Trump said proudly.
“You’re much more than a technologist,” the president told Mr. Musk, adding that he was also a “good person.”
What both men have in common is a certain cunning and transactionalism. They played off each other to paint a copacetic picture of what they were up to with their government cuts. The words “competence” and “caring” were used repeatedly.
And yet, there were occasional moments when Mr. Trump seemed to let on, if only a little, that he was aware that Mr. Musk was playing with fire. “Social Security won’t be touched,” the president promised at one point, adding, “Medicare, Medicaid, none of that stuff is going to be touched.”
And still, despite having been asked many times by now, neither one of them was really able to answer about Mr. Musk’s many conflicts of interest. “I haven’t asked the president for anything ever,” he said at one point, as though that settled the matter.
Mr. Musk has no problem speaking the loaded political language that Mr. Trump favors; he described the “thrashing of the bureaucracy as we try to restore democracy and the will of the people.” Mr. Trump’s ears seemed to perk up as Mr. Musk slammed the opposition for stymying their efforts, saying: “What they are doing is unconstitutional. They are guilty of the crime of which they accuse us.”
“That’s always the first thing they do,” Mr. Trump said, cutting in. He added that it was all “a big con job” as Mr. Musk nodded along.
“I feel like I’m interviewing two brothers here,” Mr. Hannity said at one point.
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