Elon Musk may be the world’s richest man, but he’s never going to be its most powerful politician. “No, he’s not gonna be president, that I can tell you,” the president-elect told a crowd in Arizona.

Musk, the owner of car manufacturer Tesla and social media platform X, has been tapped by Trump to lead the proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with biotech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, after vocally supporting and financially backing his campaign for president.

PHOENIX — President-elect Donald Trump dismissed any suggestion that he’s being usurped by his high-profile billionaire ally Elon Musk, coming off a week in which Musk helped derail an emergency spending measure to avert a government shutdown.