TOI CORRESPONDENT FROM WASHINGTON: When Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in snow swept Washington DC on Wednesday evening (Thursday a.m. IST) and checks into Blair House, he will be looking at two storied edifices of the US Capital in front of him: The White House, diagonally across the road, and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB), directly in front of him. He will be meeting White House incumbent Donald Trump on Thursday evening; less certain is when he will be meeting the temporary resident of EEOB who is now thought to be the most important man in the United States.
Elon Musk has been camping out at the EEOB– which some historians consider the ugliest building in America — for almost a month since Trump returned to the White House. He is expected to walk across to Blair House at some point to meet a man he has openly expressed admiration for and who in turn has courted him for almost a decade in a tech outreach few Indian PMs have undertaken. On the agenda will be advancing the coming of Musk companies — Tesla and SpaceX — into a market that the world’s richest man sees as legitimately protected by Modi to safeguard India’s interest.
Follow live updates: PM Modi wraps up France visit, leaves for key US trip
An extraordinary event at the White House on Tuesday showed just why Musk is now considered the most important man in America, as the South Africa-born billionaire with a net worth of almost $ 400 billion held forth in the Oval Office on his work, raging about the stranglehold of the bureaucracy in America, and explaining his efforts to cull the government. Seated behind the Resolute Desk, Trump, who rarely cedes centerstage to anyone, allowed “President Musk” — as some have dubbed the DOGE honcho — to speak virtually uninterrupted for half an hour.
“If the bureaucracy’s in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?” Musk asked in an unprecedented rant, accusing US government officials of enriching themselves at the expense of tax payers, as President Trump, seated behind the Resolute Desk, nodded in approval. “Quite a few people” in the bureaucracy had managed to increase their network by millions of dollars, Musk suggesting rampant corruption in the government and calling the bureaucracy an “unelected, fourth, unconstitutional branch of government, which has, in a lot of ways, currently, more power than any elected representative.”
“It does not match the will of the people,” Musk, who is himself unelected, said of the bureaucracy, even as courts have stepped in to constrain his efforts to cull the 2.4 million federal work force. Musk called the ruling a “judicial coup.”
The unusual media interaction was made even more remarkable by Musk bringing in his four-year old son, named X, to the meeting, in a move many MAGA supporters found endearing, but which critics, including X’s mother and Musk’s estranged partner, found irksome. “He should not be in public like this…But I’m glad he was polite. Sigh.” X’s mother, Canadian singer Claire Boucher wrote, after footage of the tete-e-tete surfaced online. While Musk was smearing the federal bureaucracy, X was busy digging his nose and smearing booger on the Resolute Desk.