President Donald Trump may have signaled that he's growing tired of his so-called co-president Elon Musk, according to MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle.
The president on Tuesday announced a joint venture investing up to $500 billion for infrastructure related to artificial intelligence by a new partnership formed by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank, but the CEO of one of those companies is the archenemy to Musk, who poured at least $277 million of his own money into Trump's re-election campaign and has been at his side as a key adviser since the election.
"I will make one, maybe it's a political point but it's worth pointing out, [at] the press conference yesterday, [OpenAI CEO] Sam Altman, standing behind the presidential seal with president Trump standing next to him," said CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin. "Think about that just for a moment, and the reason I say think about that, Sam Altman is Elon Musk's nemesis, and there has been a long conversation about whether we thought that Elon Musk was going to have influence over president Trump, and he was going to use his influence to thwart and hurt his enemies, and I think it was a surprise. I don't know if it's surprising or not, but I think it was remarkable, just worth remarking upon that Sam Altman and president Trump standing there next to each other. I should also mention Sam Altman spent $1 million during the inauguration, but the truth is that clearly the president, president Trump, behind this in a major way, and I think that that has a lot of folks sort of looking at this, trying to understand what it all means."
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"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough agreed the partnership, which Musk undercut Wednesday by claiming the tech companies didn't have the money to carry out its plans, was noteworthy, saying the two moguls had feuded publicly since he pulled out of the company behind the AI chatbot ChatGPT.
"We've heard about this rivalry for quite some time and Elon Musk, using his position close to Donald Trump to sort of box Sam Altman out," Scarborough said. "So, yeah, I would say that is news. I don't think we over-read it, but certainly all of the words that were written talking about how Musk is going to be able to keep Altman away from the incoming president disproven yesterday in that press conference. So I'm just saying when I saw it, I was like, whoa – that's news."
Ruhle thought the news conference was noteworthy for another reason.
"I think it's less about Sam Altman and it's more about Donald Trump saying, 'I'm the daddy here, there's only one president.' Remember, over the last few weeks, as Elon Musk has been glued to Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, going to have an office just potentially down the road from the White House, this is Donald Trump potentially putting Elon Musk on notice and saying to the world, 'There are not co-presidents, I'm the only one in charge – don't get too comfortable here, Elon, Sam's around the corner.'"
"But I would say Elon Musk saying, 'I don't even think they have the money,' this is something important," she added. "It's not that Joe Biden was anti-AI – he wasn't. His executive order was extensive, he talked about it in his final remarks. [National security adviser] Jake Sullivan did, too. One of the things that the former White House acknowledged, they didn't have the money yet. So Donald Trump gets in the job, pulls out all the regulations, right... So I just think what Trump announced yesterday kind of encapsulates the two administrations, that Joe Biden was potentially too careful, too bound by so many restrictions that some would say flew in the face of innovation, and Donald Trump rolls in and it's like, 'Money or not, I'm announcing it – we're doing it, animal spirits. Let's go.' It was the two of them in a nutshell."