Will a Time Magazine Cover Drive a Wedge Between Trump and Musk?

The president did not look amused.He was meeting the Japanese prime minister for the first time on Friday when a reporter shouted out to ask if he had a “reaction” to the new cover of Time magazine.

The cover, the reporter told Mr.Trump, depicts “Elon Musk sitting behind your Resolute Desk.”“No,” Mr.

Trump answered pointedly.He looked down at the floor.

The next few seconds stretched like an eternity as a translator related the exchange to the prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, in Japanese.Just in case any of the sauciness of the moment had been lost in translation, Mr.Trump waited until the interpreter had finished and then cracked: “Is Time magazine still in business? I didn’t even know that.” Everyone around him laughed gamely, if a bit nervously.It is unlikely that Mr.

Trump didn’t know whether Time magazine was still in business.His own face had, after all, stared out from its cover only two months ago, when the magazine anointed him its “Person of the Year.” As part of the rollout of that issue, Mr.

Trump rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange in front of a blown-up version of the cover.It is pretty much Trumpology 101 that the president has a long-held fixation with the cover of Time, a durable totem of the 1980s, from which most of his cultural touchstones derive even today.He has always held up its cover as an indication of status, going as far as to mock up fake versions featuring himself.The last time he was president, a Time cover in 2017 featuring his adviser Stephen K.

Bannon at the height of his powers — “The Great Manipulator,” it read — was believed to have annoyed Mr.Trump.

Mr.Bannon left the White House later that year.No one can say if the magazine still holds as much sway over Mr.

Trump as it did then.One thing seems certain, though, and that is that Mr.

Musk appeared eager to stay on Mr.Trump’s good side.

On Friday morning, a few hours after the new Time cover dropped, Mr.Musk posted on the social...