Is Team Trump turning on Elon Musk?

Even as the president-elect continues his bear hug of the tech billionaire, sources within President Trump’s transition team are beginning to bad-mouth Mr. Musk — suggesting that he may be overstaying his welcome at Mar-a-Lago in new leaks to NBC News. 

The sources claim that Mr. Musk’s around-the-clock presence at the Palm Beach resort has started to irk those who have been involved in Trump’s presidential campaign for longer, with some seeing him as overstepping his role in Trump’s transition process. 

“He’s behaving as if he’s a co-president and making sure everyone knows it,” one of sources tells NBC, adding that “he’s sure taking lots of credit for the president’s victory. Bragging about America PAC and X to anyone who will listen.” 

The source suspects that Mr. Musk is “trying to make President Trump feel indebted to him. And the president is indebted to no one.” 

Another anonymous source claims that the Tesla chief executive is sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, offering an “opinion on and about everything” and wanting “to be seen as having say in everything (even if he doesn’t).” 

The report comes just a day after Trump named Mr. Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy co-heads of a new “Department of Government Efficiency.” The idea for the commission was raised by Mr. Musk himself during an interview he conducted with the president-elect in August. 

The agency, Trump stated on Tuesday, is meant to “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” The announcement sparked concern over potential conflicts of interest, given that Mr. Musk owns several companies that rely heavily on government contracts. 

Mr. Musk and Trump buddied up after the billionaire businessman endorsed the GOP nominee following Trump’s near-fatal assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. Mr. Musk quickly became involved in Trump’s presidential campaign, joining him on various campaign stops, and even launching a pro-Trump political action committee, America PAC, to which Mr. Musk donated $75 million himself. 

In a testament to Mr. Musk’s closeness to the campaign, the Tesla head joined the Trump campaign on election night, and according to the two anonymous sources, has been with the president-elect in Mar-a-Lago for much of the past week. Since the election, Mr. Musk has reportedly taken a front seat in Trump’s transition team, sitting in on nearly every interview with prospective administration appointees and even joining the president elect on phone calls with foreign leaders. 

Photos of Mr. Musk hanging around Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound have been shared on social media, with one of Trump’s granddaughters, Kai Trump, posting an image on X of her and Mr. Musk, who she wrote was “achieving uncle status.”  

The long term feasibility of the relationship between Mr. Musk and the 45th, and 47th, president, however, remains uncertain. According to one of the sources who spoke to NBC, Mr. Musk hasn’t yet gotten the memo on a key practice to being “effective in Trump’s world” — keeping a low profile. 

The Sun’s efforts to reach Mr. Musk for a response were not immediately successful.