President Donald Trump hosted quite a unique joint press conference alongside billionaire Elon Musk at the Oval Office on Tuesday, and body language experts think the event revealed quite a lot.
Trump began the conference by giving Musk, his most powerful adviser, the floor to speak about efforts to downsize the government via the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative the Tesla and SpaceX CEO is leading.
Trump claimed during the conference that DOGE has found “billions and billions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse” in government spending — though neither Trump nor Musk offered specifics.
The president signed an executive order later that day to continue downsizing the federal workforce and to expand government hiring power for DOGE. The Musk-led initiative has already faced several lawsuits and court orders since it was established last month.
But the one-of-a-kind conference spurred a lot of reactions on social media. Trump was seated at the Resolute Desk for the duration of the discussion, while Musk — who was not elected to office by American voters, and who has been criticized for the lack of transparency into DOGE operations — stood nearby with his 4-year-old son. Clips of the preschooler’s typical 4-year-old behavior during the conference, such as picking his nose, made rounds on the internet.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said on Tuesday night that Trump’s conference with Musk — the richest man in the world and now a “special government employee” — displayed “the most powerless image of a president of the United States ever created by a camera.”
Read on to hear what experts have to say about Trump’s body language during the conference, and what it could mean.
Trump was seated during the conference while Musk stood nearby. What might these different positions display?
Patti Wood, a body language and nonverbal communication expert and author of “SNAP: Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language, and Charisma,” told HuffPost that she thinks Musk’s standing “shows a certain level of power over Trump, who is sitting.”
Wood also pointed out that Musk’s casual attire (he sported a black “Make America Great Again” cap) compared to Trump’s more formal attire also sent a message.
“Musk wearing a T-shirt, coat and a cap shows he doesn’t feel a need to dress up or honor Trump by wearing professional clothing,” she said.
Karen Donaldson, a communication and body language expert, told HuffPost that she believes Trump and Musk’s different positions showed the “trust and respect” that the president has for the billionaire X owner.
It conveyed that Trump has no need to “pronounce his authority or position” over Musk.
Denise M. Dudley, a psychologist and author of “Making Relationships Last,” told HuffPost that the standing vs. sitting positions could have been planned with the intention to show Trump in a more dominant position with Musk standing several feet behind him.
What do experts make of Trump’s overall body language while Musk was speaking to reporters?
Dudley thinks the president appeared “bored” while Musk spoke.
“He nods his head in agreement at semi-appropriate moments, but he mostly just sits there with his hands folded,” she said, adding that she thinks Trump was in an “unnatural” position having to sit quietly while someone else talked — and without having the “limelight directed toward him.”
She added that Trump’s body language showed that he was “fake listening” because his nods were “totally random” and he sported a “vague, fixed” facial expression while Musk was speaking.
Donaldson pointed to the brief moments in which Trump gave a slight smile at Musk, saying it possibly conveys somewhat of a “proud papa moment.”
Mark Bowden, body language expert and author, said that when Trump smiled and laughed while Musk shared various claims about Social Security fraud, it showed that the president enjoyed Musk’s remarks and that “he knows that these exaggerated examples will resonate most with the public.”
Bowden told HuffPost that he thinks the president exhibited a “protective gesture” — looking away, inspecting his hands, covering his knuckles and pursing his lips — when Musk said, “Obviously, we want to make sure that people who deserve Social Security do receive it.”
There were “mistimed and miscommunicated regulatory signals between them,” he said, adding that “Regulator signals are gestures that help us understand who should speak when.”
“Unfortunately, the optics of this could suggest that Trump fundamentally disagrees with Musk — or at best, is visibly indifferent to Americans receiving the Social Security they deserve,” Bowden said.
Wood thinks that Trump and Musk’s different standing/sitting positions put the president in the less powerful position — and Trump, as a result, exhibited stress.
“Musk standing behind him, making Trump have to turn around awkwardly to interact, immediately reduces Trump’s power,” she said. “You can see Trump’s stress by the way he holds his own hand.”
She said that Trump holding his right hand down in a soft fist while his upper hand clamped over it is a “gesture that indicates he wants at some level to fight Musk (the fist) but is keeping himself from doing it.”
Wood also pointed out that throughout the conference, Trump made the effort to nonverbally interact with Musk, and not necessarily the other way around.
She said that this stands out because typically, when people are speaking to Trump, they turn to face him, and the president rarely physically turns his “body windows” — which means, for example, his heart, neck, mouth and eyes — towards people he’s interacting with, Wood explained.
What can we take away from Musk bringing his 4-year-old son to the conference?
People on social media criticized Musk for bringing his child to the press conference, with some accusing the billionaire of using his son as a distraction.
Even the child’s mother, Canadian pop singer Grimes, criticized Musk for taking their son to the Oval Office press conference, writing on X, formerly Twitter: “He should not be in public like this.”
Bowden said that he believes Musk’s son’s presence was clearly used as a “symbol” of Trump’s power.
“If you can have the wealthiest person on the planet in a room, standing with their child, still wearing their coats and hat, then clearly, you are the more powerful one,” he said.
As for Musk, Bowden thinks the Tesla CEO used his son as a distraction, particularly at one point, when he appeared to deflect a question by jokingly saying that his son, who was then on his shoulders, was sticking his fingers in his ears. A reporter had asked Musk to divulge more information about the fraud his DOGE team has claimed to have seen within the Treasury Department.
“In this moment, Musk uses his son as a vehicle to justify his own discomfort,” Bowden said. “He takes off his hat, brushes his hair back, and swings from side to side — all nervous adaptive behaviors.”
Wood called the situation bizarre, saying that Musk was trying to contain his preschooler while talking about “making significant, impactful changes” like slashing federal budgets. She thinks Musk was likely advised that having his son there would make him look “warm and fuzzy,” but that instead it made him look “clownish” and “Trump ineffective by association.”
She said that Trump made “failed” efforts to interact with the 4-year-old at points in the conference.
“Trump’s look of overt anger on his face, tilted shoulder placement that shows displeasure, while he seems to have to sit there and take it,” she said about the president’s overall demeanor.
Donaldson doesn’t think Trump seemed “overly bothered or concerned” by the child, and that when the 4-year-old became more vocal at the beginning of the conference, Trump seemed to try to silence him in a “very calm, grandparent-like fashion.”
Dudley believes Trump looked irritated during the event when Musk made a joke that “gravitas can be difficult sometimes” after his son began speaking.
“No one really laughs,” she said about the reaction to Musk’s joke. “And Trump makes a very weak smile — almost a smirk. I think this moment is important. I think Trump is doing his best to show approval of (and solidarity for) Musk’s decision to include his son in the conference.”
“However, I think Trump is annoyed,” she added. “Trump keeps his hands tightly clasped together on his desk and looks down for a while.”
“Trump’s body language says that he was not in favor of having a kid attending his important press conference,” she later added.
What did Trump’s body language convey when a reporter asked Musk about his potential conflicts of interest as the DOGE leader?
During the conference, a reporter asked Musk whether he would be “policing” himself due to his potential conflicts of interest as head of DOGE, considering his companies have received billions of dollars in federal government contracts over the years.
Dudley thinks Trump’s body language showed quite a lot at that moment.
“This is one of the few times when Trump looks at the camera, intertwines his fingers, looks at the camera again, frowns, wiggles around a little, and then starts looking back at Musk,” she said. “He keeps his fingers intertwined while frowning.”
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She said she initially thought Trump’s behavior revealed a nervousness due to the reporter’s question, but then wondered if Trump was “trying to wake himself up.”
“Maybe it’s a bit of both,” she said. “The question probably did make him uncomfortable, and he probably became very interested in how Musk was going to answer it, but I also think this is where Trump lost his focus and wanted to be done with the conference.”
With the increasing power given to Musk’s DOGE and ongoing calls for more transparency, it continues to be important to keep up with Trump’s executive actions and any nonverbal cues that might reveal any information about Trump and Musk’s allyship.