Donald Trump and Elon Musk are acting as co-chief executives, according to a global business analyst — but she warned those partnerships never last.
The tech mogul stood over the president, who was seated at the Resolute Desk, during a news conference this week in the Oval Office, where Musk outlined his broad plans for remaking the federal government as Trump nodded in agreement, and business analyst Rana Foroohar told CNN's Pamela Brown the pair held an unusual position in U.S. government.
"Well, I would say they're insider traders," Foroohar said. "You know, they're they fancy themselves co-CEOs. Of course, I will say, as somebody who's covered business for 33 years, co-CEO positions never work well – somebody always gets ousted, so we'll see, we'll see what happens there."
In the meantime, Musk and his underlings in the Department of Government Efficiency have access to sensitive data and payment systems that could be exploited for their own personal gain.
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"But what's so concerning is that the access that Musk and his team have gotten so far allows them all kinds of potentially insider runarounds," Foroohar said. "I mean, you could, you know, front trade treasury auctions, you could get access to funding, early funding information that might benefit certain industries or companies. You know, if you have the keys to the treasury, you can authorize payments to be made or not made. I mean, these are these are the sorts of powers that you haven't seen really since several centuries ago, the time of kings and autocrats."
"I mean, just like Maya Angelou said, when people show you who they are, believe them," she added. "Folks like Musk and Peter Thiel and the whole crew that we're talking about, the libertarians in [Silicon] Valley have been saying for many years that they think democracy is broken and that we should move to a world in which there really is a different kind of power structure, and I think that what we're seeing is eerily similar to some of those statements."
