Ex-RNC Chair Suggests Trump's 'Old' Age the Reason for Musk's Rise in GOP

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What's New

Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), suggested on Saturday morning on MSNBC's The Weekend that 78-year-old President-elect Donald Trump's "old" age is a key factor in billionaire adviser Elon Musk's rise within the Republican Party.

Newsweek has emailed the Trump transition team on Saturday morning for comment.

Why It Matters

Trump is slated to be the oldest president in U.S. history when inaugurated next month, surpassing President Joe Biden's age on Inauguration Day in January 2021 by a couple of months.

Musk's power among Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement has been rising in recent months. He spent about $250 million on Trump's 2024 campaign and is set to join the next administration as co-head of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Last week, the 53-year-old billionaire led the charge against the initial version of the government funding bill, sparking claims among Democrats and some Republicans that Musk, not Trump, is the real leader of the GOP.

Fox News' Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones said Friday morning that he had spoken with Trump, saying that the ongoing taunts of "President Elon Musk" from Democratic members of Congress do "not bother the president."

What to Know

Symone Sanders-Townsend, co-host of The Weekend, insisted that Musk needs Trump more than the president-elect needs the billionaire entrepreneur and investor.

"Like he needs them, he's the one with these government contracts that he wants to keep and this access he wants to continue to have," Sanders-Townsend said. "He put the pressure on people and got it out. Elon Musk is playing the H-E-L-L out of Republicans in Congress and the president-elect, and I'm wondering when Trump is going to show up, honey."

She then asked: "Where is the Donald Trump from The Apprentice? The man talking about hired, fired, hired, fired, you go. The Donald Trump I thought the people elected—not me but the other people—he's the one that would usually like to lay down the law and be clear about where he stands. He posts through it all," she insisted.

"Well, maybe he's too old for the job now," Steele, a Trump critic, responded with a smile.

During this year's presidential race, Trump refused to release his full medical records, in contrast to Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden had all but secured the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, but the 81-year-old dropped out of the running in July and endorsed Harris amid intense pressure from within his own party due to concerns over his age and health.

Asked about concerns regarding his age October, Trump said he would hire a CEO his own age.

"I know many people in their 80s. I know guys in their 80s that won't leave the company, like family companies where they don't want the kids to take over because they're much more competent than their kids," Trump told Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago. "You just say some of our great world leaders are in the 80s. And if you look throughout history, some of our greatest world leaders were in their 80s."

What People are Saying

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican and Trump ally, to reporters Friday night: "Elon Musk and I talked about an hour ago. We talked about the extraordinary challenges of this job. I said, 'Hey, you wanna be Speaker of the House? I don't know.' He said this may be the hardest job in the world. I think it is."

Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, on X, formerly Twitter, on Musk's involvement in the budget negotiations on Friday: "Are we still a democracy or have we already moved to oligarchy and authoritarianism?" The day before, Sanders said Musk's objection to a version of the bill "is oligarchy at work."

Steven Cheung, Trump's communications director, told Newsweek in an email Friday: "Democrats are just big mad because they lost the election decisively and Joe Biden has gone completely AWOL."

Representative Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, wrote in a post on X: "Donald Trump and the Republican Party are now led by Elon Musk. But we can stop him, and we proved that today by stopping a government shutdown. Let's keep fighting like hell for working people."