Donald Trump is wasting no time making a punch line out of some of his key allies, including Elon Musk.

During his first meeting with Republican lawmakers on the Hill as president-elect, Trump asserted his power over Musk, mocking the tech billionaire for sticking around for so long.

“Elon won’t go home. I can’t get rid of him,” Trump said Wednesday. “Until I don’t like him.”

The world’s richest man has reportedly spent “nearly every single day” of the last week at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, according to CNN. Musk has been spotted golfing with the president-elect, dining with him and his wife, Melania, and has even been in the room while Trump phones world leaders, hopping on calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell argued that Trump’s comments about Musk were an assertion of his dominance, played before a room that has to play along.

“Everyone laughed,” said O’Donnell. “They laughed that uncomfortable laugh. But they laugh when Donald Trump makes a joke about someone on his team, a joke that everyone knows is true, a joke that paints that person as pathetic, as Donald Trump’s personal sense of superiority demands that he do.”

O’Donnell also suggested that Musk’s new role in the government—co-leading a new agency, the Department of Government Efficiency, otherwise known as “DOGE”—is basically a joke in itself, with Musk’s responsibilities being tantamount to a “fake job” with little more power than that of a lobbyist on K Street.

Musk will be the likely benefactor of his extended stay with the president-elect, whose opinion is famously swayed by whomever he last interacted with. But, according to tech journalist Kara Swisher, the relationship between the two self-imagined strongmen is destined to flame out.

“They’re both narcissists, and there can be only one narcissist as head of the country, and that’s Donald Trump who just won the election,” Swisher said on Monday. “You know he owes things to Elon, but at some point, you know if he takes too much of the attention—think about Steve Bannon. You remember he was on the cover of that magazine, and how quickly he got out, even though he was critical to Trump’s first campaign and he was right in the middle of the White House, and then he wasn’t.

“Trump goes through people like tissues, essentially,” Swisher noted. “And even if it’s Musk, they’re going to clash at some point.”

Israel is preparing a cease-fire plan regarding its bombing of Lebanon as a gift to the incoming Donald Trump administration, The Washington Post reports.

The Post reports, citing three Israeli sources, that Ron Dermer, the Israeli minister of strategic affairs, told Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner on Sunday that Israel was quickly preparing a cease-fire deal to give the president-elect an early win when he takes office in January. Dermer visited Trump and Kushner on Sunday at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate before a visit to President Biden at the White House. There is no indication Israel will end its bombing of Lebanon before January.

It’s no secret that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported Trump over Kamala Harris, and a quick peace deal would raise suspicions that Netanyahu was holding off ceasing hostilities before the election to help Trump’s prospects. Trump has supported Israel’s brutal bombing campaigns in both Lebanon and Gaza, reportedly telling Netanyahu to “do what you have to do” in a phone call early last month.

In a video statement Sunday, Netanyahu said he had spoken to Trump three times in the preceding days, saying that he saw “major opportunities ahead for Israel, especially in advancing peace.” This is quite a different tack than what Netanyahu has been saying for the past year, as Israeli forces have killed at least 44,383 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, including more than 16,765 children.

Trump made overtures to Arab American communities in Michigan in the weeks leading up to the election, campaigning in Dearborn, the country’s largest Arab-majority city. The move paid off, with Trump winning a majority of voters not only in Dearborn but also in the battleground state of Michigan.

Would a peace deal only covering Lebanon placate those voters? There is no mention of Gaza in the Post’s report, and Netanyahu has not said anything about a forthcoming cease-fire, let alone a peace deal, regarding Israel’s bombing campaign in the territory. But Trump will gladly take anything he can call a win while continuing to enable Netanyahu’s actions.

President-elect Donald Trump surprised Republican lawmakers on Wednesday when he chose Florida Representative Matt Gaetz to serve as his attorney general—including many of the........

© New Republic