Ex-Fox News star Bill O’Reilly has warned President Donald Trump he better steer away from his billionaire buddy and senior adviser Elon Musk.
“Musk is a short timer,” the former O’Reilly Factor anchor said in an appearance on NewsNation’s Cuomo, hosted by ex-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo.
“He’s just too hot. You just can’t have a guy that hot.”
Musk’s attempt to rally Wisconsin voters fell embarrassingly flat when conservative Brad Schimel lost a key state Supreme Court race on Tuesday—just months after Trump carried the state in the presidential election.
The tech billionaire, who has slashed federal jobs and gutted agencies in his relentless cost-cutting rampage at the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), had traveled to the Midwestern state to hold a town hall and a rally, apparently convinced that his presence would be a political boost—not a liability.
O’Reilly, who has come out in support of DOGE, said he thought Musk “did a good job exposing the government waste… but now, the technicians should take over.”
“You don’t need Elon to go out and sell [the cost-cutting initiative]. It’s sold,” said O’Reilly, who has launched the media venture No Spin News since his departure from Fox.
After the Tesla CEO’s humiliating defeat in Wisconsin and news of plummeting approval ratings, Trump reportedly told his inner circle that his billionaire cheerleader will be taking a backseat at the White House.
“I think he’ll remain a Trump advisor, but I do think he’ll go back to the private sector,” O’Reilly predicted.
But a senior Trump administration official told Politico Wednesday that anyone hoping that Musk will disappear entirely from Trump’s orbit is “fooling themselves.”
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday that he thought Musk is “fantastic, and he’s a patriot.” But the president predicted Musk “will stay for a certain period of time and then he’s going to want to get back to his businesses full time.”
Both O’Reilly and Cuomo, were fired from Fox News and CNN respectively for allegations of misconduct.
O’Reilly paid almost $9 million to former Fox News producer Andrea Mackris to settle her sexual harassment lawsuit, in which she detailed lewd, menacing calls and conversations where he allegedly forced her to listen to his sexual fantasies about her.
“Here was my boss, a man who held my career and future in his hands, acknowledging that he knew I’d never consented but he didn’t care,” Mackris told the Daily Beast in an exclusive 2021 interview.
