Then I realised, happily, that someone else was eager to fill the role of the president-elect’s helpmeet, cheering him on and bucking him up, telling him his crowd was the biggest ever. Someone who seemed much more eager and excited to be by Trump’s side, to travel with him and bounce around onstage and look adoringly at him. Elon Musk. Or should we call him Elonia?

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Musk is itching to clean house and fulfil the Bill and Hillary Clinton pledge of “two for the price of one”. T-shirts showing the lovey-dovey pair are being sold by MAGA vendors.

Melania seemed distant in pictures with Ivanka, whom she called “the Princess”. Elonia is rarin’ to be in the picture with the Trump family. Donald Trump’s teenage granddaughter Kai tweeted a golf course picture noting that Musk had achieved “uncle status”.

Trump appointed Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head what he called the Department of Government Efficiency, its name inspired by the classic doge meme. Musk is eager to learn how the branches of government work so he can help Trump lop them off.

Full of recommendations, many about friends and associates, Musk has been in most job interviews for the new administration, The New York Times reported. He went with Trump to meet House Republicans last week. Then, he was on the plane back to Mar-a-Lago when the deliberations happened that led to Trump picking the indecent Gaetz to replace the decent Merrick Garland.

Musk posted afterward that “the Hammer of Justice is coming”. More like the hammer of injustice for their enemies. In addition to helping the transition, Musk has assumed diplomatic duties, sitting in on calls with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, and meeting with Iran’s United Nations ambassador in New York to talk about defusing tensions. Musk also attended a national security meeting.

Some Trump advisers complain that Musk is too high-profile and too pushy about his own agenda, NBC News reported. One Trump associate even joked to me that Musk is “the Thing that wouldn’t leave”. At a Thursday night MAGA gala at Mar-a-Lago, Trump teased about Musk’s ubiquity.

“You know, he likes this place,” Trump told the crowd, including, of course, Musk. “I can’t get him out of here. He just likes this place. And you know what? I like having him here, too.”

Despite all his denouncing of elites, Trump loves them and craves their respect. He was thrilled, after he raised his fist after the assassination attempt, when Jeff Bezos posted about Trump’s “grace and courage under literal fire” and Mark Zuckerberg said “it was one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life”.

Trump loves Musk because he builds cool stuff, inspired Robert Downey Jr’s portrayal in Iron Man, and sparked superhero memes with Musk, Trump and the MAGA gang. Also, Musk turned the town square of Twitter into a political weapon and funnelled circa $US150 million into a Trump-aligned super political action committee for the campaign’s ground game.

The two billionaires are both much-married highchair kings, relentless trolls and promoters extraordinaire who will say anything – whether it gets them in trouble or not. They both have the solipsistic attitude of a spoiled rotten 11-year-old.

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They are both transactional. Musk is a glorified – and highly leveraged – defence contractor, so entwining himself with the president-elect is helpful. The mogul was born in South Africa, so he can’t be president himself; this is the closest he can get.

Still, the men make strange bedfellows, given that Musk is globalism personified, and Trump is trying to strangle globalism.

As in every blazing hot romance, there is a good chance it will end in tears and jealousy. The moment may come when Musk, too, swats away Trump’s hand.

The first time that self-described “first buddy” Musk is on a magazine cover described as a younger, taller, better-looking “co-president”, it will be over.

Musk is probably already on thin ice because, like Trump, he has been getting standing ovations when he enters the Mar-a-Lago dining room.

At the MAGA gala, Trump warned RFK Jr: “Don’t get too popular, Bobby. You know you’ve reached about the level now.”

Trump and Musk may learn that people want government cuts until they find out what they’re losing. But for now, the two men are just a couple of bros with chainsaws making googly eyes at each other.