'Striking': Trump said to have given Dems 'real political hay' with 'bizarre spectacle'
Reacting to the Oval Office press conference in Tuesday where Donald Trump sat at his desk and let billionaire Elon Musk soak up all the attention and answer a flurry of questions, the panel on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" were stunned to see the president let someone else be the center of attention.
After sharing clips of Musk fielding questions while his young son joined Trump in being a passive observer, co-host Jonathan Lemire promoted guest John Heilemann, "Weigh in, if you will, on that body language in the Oval Office –– It's so striking. When was the last time Donald Trump was in a press availability where he only got a couple questions and Elon Musk got the vast majority. It didn't seem to be sitting too well with the commander-in-chief."
"Well I think if there was any question about, Jonathan, who is the president right now and who is the co-president, at least the semiotics of that scene made the pretty clear," he replied. "Musk in the position of total dominance. The notion that they standing next to each other doesn't really give an accurate picture of what was happening. I mean, you had Musk towering over Trump. Trump at his desk kind of looking at Musk's kid, barely contributing to the conversation."
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"Way Too Early" host Ali Vitali contributed, "I'm glad we drilled down deeper on the optics of what was happening in the Oval yesterday, because it was striking to see Musk standing the attention of the room seemingly oriented around him. The tone that he used, I think, was also instructive: this flippant tone of we're doing things quickly, we may be wrong. But there are real impacts to that flippant tone and the fast pace that they're trying to enact here–– so that's the optics and the tone."
According to journalist Mark Leibovich, that may be the last time such a press conference will occur.
"I don't think a scene like what we saw yesterday is going to be repeated anytime soon, certainly without, you know, a kind of split-screen scenario with Donald Trump sitting there," he explained. "And I mean ... the bizarre sort of spectacle that it was. But yeah, taken alone, this could be a piece of real political hay that Democrats could make here."
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