Donald Trump apparently posts a private message to Elon Musk

US President-elect Donald Trump has apparently publicly posted a private message to billionaire and Trump supporter Elon Musk. “Where are you?” Trump writes in his post on Truth Social. “When are you coming back to the ‘center of the universe’, Mar-a-Lago. Bill Gates requests a meeting tonight. We miss you and X. New Year’s Eve is going to be AMAZING!!! DJT,” the post continued.

CNN reported, citing an anonymous source, that Microsoft founder Bill Gates was seeking a meeting with Trump. In the weeks since the election victory at the beginning of November, he had already welcomed several high-ranking CEOs, including Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Apple boss Tim Cook and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos. Amazon and Meta said after the meetings that they had each donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Other companies in the Fortune 500, a list of the 500 highest-grossing companies in the United States, have already donated, including Ford, General Motors and the cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase. Gates congratulated Trump on his election victory at the beginning of November, but he made several critical comments about the president during his first term in office.

Trump had recently expressed his enthusiasm about the many appointments with the CEOs of major US companies. After a dinner (you can read what dinners at Mar-a-Lago are all about here) with Bezos, Trump posted on X: “EVERYONE WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!”

Not only does the news reveal that Trump and Musk apparently plan to spend New Year’s Eve together, but it also appears to include Musk’s son X Æ A-Xii. This is colloquially called X by Musk and his ex-girlfriend and mother of the child, the Canadian singer Grimes – just as Musk also named the short message service Twitter after the takeover.

Recently there has been repeated criticism of the closeness between Trump and Musk; both recently traveled together to the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. Critics are already calling the tech billionaire “President Musk” because of his closeness to Trump and possible influence on him. Together with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk will also work on Donald Trump’s proposals to cut government spending in a newly created committee called DOGE (“Department of Government Efficiency”) starting in January.

At an appearance in Arizona, Trump countered rumors that Musk was secretly in charge – but did not directly deny the billionaire’s political influence. Trump declared: “No, he will not be president, I can promise you that. (…) And do you know why he can’t be? He wasn’t born in this country.” Musk has US citizenship, but comes from South Africa. According to the US Constitution, he is excluded from the office of president.