The fact that Donald Trump had yet another meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán this week was not at all surprising. The Republican has spent an outrageous amount of time publicly celebrating the foreign leader, having private conversations with the Hungarian, and even welcoming Orbán to Mar-a-Lago. The more the prime minister’s authoritarian takeover of his country generated international outrage, the more Trump extended over-the-top support to the prime minister.
But part of what made the latest meeting notable was one of the discussion’s unelected participants. The Washington Post reported:
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met with President-elect Donald Trump, billionaire Elon Musk and Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Michael Waltz, at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, the European leader announced on social media platform X.
There was no obvious reason for the conspiratorial billionaire to join that conversation, but in the post-election season, it’s been surprisingly common.
- When Trump spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in November, Musk joined the phone call.
- When Trump traveled to Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral and spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron, Musk was there.
- When Trump spoke to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Musk was there, too.
Over the weekend, former White House national security adviser John Bolton, who served at Trump’s side in 2018 and 2019, said during a CNN interview, “You know, it’s almost like Musk has become vice president.”
Pointing to the event in France, Bolton added, “I don’t know where JD Vance is on this trip, but Elon Musk, to this point, remains a private citizen and he has no governmental authority. … Let’s keep that in mind.” What’s more, it’s worth emphasizing that after the president-elect’s inauguration, Musk still won’t have any statutory governmental authority: The billionaire will have a leadership role on an advisory panel called the Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE, but that will empower him to do little more than issue strongly worded memos. That said, Musk continues to have financial interests around the globe, which helps explain his international interactions with foreign leaders. Why Trump is helping facilitate those discussions is something the Republican has not yet explained.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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