President Musk to Be Featured on the Cover of TIME Next Week

The latest TIME cover was just unveiled, and it features Elon Musk sitting at the Resolute Desk, coffee cup in hand, smirking like he just hacked the Pentagon with a Tesla key fob. If you listen closely, you can probably hear the sound of a Mar-a-Lago TV remote shattering against the wall.

Trump has had a thing for TIME covers for years. He’s thrown tantrums when he didn’t get “Man of the Year” (which, by the way, hasn’t been called that since 1999), and he’s practically built a shrine to the times he did make the cover. Back in 2017, The Washington Post even caught him hanging a fake TIME cover featuring himself in at least five of his golf clubs. The man is, let’s say, enthusiastic about his media presence.

So now, enter Musk—tech overlord, social media chaos agent, video game cheater, and self-styled free speech absolutist—plastered on the front of TIME like he just won the presidency in some alternate reality where Twitter X polls determine elections. And if history tells us anything, Trump doesn’t do competition for the spotlight.

It wouldn’t be the first time a TIME cover set off a political firestorm. Back in 2017, Steve Bannon got the honor, with the not-so-subtle title The Great Manipulator. Trump reportedly hated it. By that summer, Bannon was out of the White House. By January 2018, Trump was calling him “Sloppy Steve” and cutting ties altogether after Fire and Fury exposed Bannon talking trash about the Trump kids. Brutal.

Is TIME hoping to manifest the same fate for Musk? The billionaire has already rubbed the Trump camp the wrong way in the early days of his administration, and now, with his fingers all over the federal government, he’s apparently driving Trump’s allies and the GOP up the wall.

The kicker? Musk is hemorrhaging goodwill, even among Republicans. And Trump? Well, he’s never been great at sharing the limelight. If there’s one thing we know, it’s that a Trump-Musk alliance is about as stable as a Tesla’s self-driving mode.