Donald Trump wastes no time making a punch line 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 Muskand mocks the tech billionaire for holding out so long.

“Elon will not 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 “almost every day” for the past week at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, according to CNN. Musk has been seen golfing with the president-elect, dining with him and his wife, Melania, and has even been in the room while Trump calls world leaders, jumps on calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan 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 had to play along.

“Everybody Laughed” said O’Donnell. “They laughed that awkward 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 does.”

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

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

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

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