New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan told the hosts of “Morning Joe” on Friday that Elon Musk‘s stint as “co-president” last year created a level of “destabilization” from which the Trump administration has never recovered.
Haberman and Swan stopped by MS NOW to once again discuss their new book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.” During their wide-ranging guest spot, the pair discussed not only the “climate of fear” that has been created under President Trump, but also why many journalists like themselves have started to just call him directly when they need information.
“The press office will not get ahead of him on anything,” Haberman noted. “We write about this episode last year in the book around the 12-day war in Iran where, when Trump saw the Pentagon sort of modifying one of his Truth Social posts about how ‘we control the skies over Iran,’ he was furious. And that was the last time that you saw any kind of contradiction of what he was saying.”
“So if you are a reporter who needs an answer fast, I understand why people are inclined to then just call him,” Haberman explained. “But if you’re a staffer, it creates this climate of fear.”
She also said that confusing chain of information was only made worse by Musk’s tenure as an official DOGE advisor to Trump and the White House.
“You had Elon Musk — and we get into this in great detail — essentially serving not as a co-president but as a co-president for parts of the first four months or so [of this term],” Haberman recalled. “That created so much destabilization of this government that I think they also never quite recovered.”
When asked about Silicon Valley’s “strategy” when it comes to appeasing and working with Trump, Swan pointed to a specific alleged instance involving Trump and Musk at Mar-a-Lago around Christmas in 2024.
“Trump was at his golf club at Doral and he’s showing off … text messages that he’s received from [Jeff] Bezos and [Mark] Zuckerberg, and Trump is basically gloating about how much they’re ‘kissing my ass,’” Swan said. “Trump showed it off to Musk at Mar-a-Lago, and Musk said ‘first-class groveling.’ So Musk was enjoying watching his rivals suck up to Trump.”
