Time published its latest cover Friday morning, featuring a striking image of a government leader sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.
But it’s not President Donald Trump.
It’s Elon Musk, Trump’s supposed right-hand man and the lead of the new Department of Government Efficiency.
On the cover, Musk sits smiling and holding a cup of coffee behind the massive desk, flanked by an American flag and the presidential flag. The image is positioned on a bright red background.
When asked about the cover Friday at the White House, Trump seemed to take aim at the publication, which recently named him 2024’s Person of the Year.
“Is Time Magazine still in business? I didn’t even know that,” Trump said, according to video of the interaction posted to social media.
He said he hadn’t yet seen the magazine and praised Musk for “doing a great job” by “finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste.”
The cover promotes a profile on Musk written by Simon Shuster and Brian Bennett headlined, “Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington.”
“So far, Musk appears accountable to no one but President Trump, who handed his campaign benefactor a sweeping mandate to bring the government in line with his agenda,” they write.
The Time feature comes after weeks of Musk’s attempts to slash government spending in an unprecedented effort to shrink the federal workforce and slash federal programs that has been shrouded in secrecy.
