OXON HILL, Md. – At an annual gathering of conservative activists, the signature red “ Make America Great Again ” hats popularized by President Donald Trump were interspersed with a noticeable number of the black “Dark MAGA” hats made popular by Elon Musk.

It was just one sign of Musk’s emerging influence and how the world’s wealthiest man — who once backed Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden — has become a conservative power center in his own right due to his connections to Trump.

“He is an authentic and unique individual. I am glad he is on the team,” said Whitney Mason, a 62-year-old real estate agent who was traveling from Seattle.

Musk was an unexpected guest of honor at the Conservative Political Action Conference, with his appearance announced hours before he took the stage wielding a chainsaw. The prop, and his comments, left little subtlety about his role or his influence, days after the Trump administration claimed in court that Musk was not in charge of his signature Department of Government Efficiency.

Speakers at CPAC frequently brought up DOGE, playfully named after a meme coin with the face of a Shiba Inu dog popularized by Musk in 2021. They variously referred to him as a “white knight,” a “hero of free speech,” and according to one of his harshest critics, Steve Bannon, “Superman.”

“What Elon and the team are doing is what Congress has not had the ability to do,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told the crowd of conservatives. “They have cracked the code. They’re inside the belly of the beast of the bureaucracy, and the algorithms are crawling through.”

The Trump administration, under Musk’s advice, has fired thousands of federal workers without warning. It gave employees an option to resign and gutted agencies without congressional approval. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who bought Twitter in 2022, has pledged to identify areas to cut costs and streamline services and save trillions of taxpayer dollars, with directives that spark confusion and have prompted demonstrations across agencies.

As Trump spoke at CPAC on Saturday, Musk announced federal workers would get an email to explain what they accomplished over the last week, saying “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

“Elon is doing a great job,” Trump said in his speech on Saturday. “We love Elon, don’t we? He’s a character.”

Critics have said that Musk could stand to benefit from his close relationship with Trump as there are a number of federal investigations and safety programs created through federal agency orders that are hitting Tesla’s plans to create fleets of robo-taxis and self-driving cars. Musk’s SpaceX also has major contracts with the Pentagon, NASA and intelligence agencies.

Colin McEvers, a 19-year old who voted for Trump, admires Vice President JD Vance and praised Musk’s business acumen, said he was concerned about Musk’s growing power in the federal government and the decline of regulations that were protecting workers from big corporations.

“I like the basic principle of making government more efficient and cutting back on costs,” said McEvers, a political science student at Salisbury University. “Do I think that there could be a lot of self-interest involved with him, with the richest man in the world playing a very large role in government in reducing these regulations, which could very well end up profiting his businesses? I definitely think that’s probably a very large part of it too.”

The Trump administration has not yet declared any actions that could benefit Tesla or Musk’s other companies.

Musk’s positions on issues like H-1B visas for high-skilled immigrant workers have made him a target of popular MAGA figures such as Bannon, who once served as Trump’s chief strategist and hosts the influential “War Room” podcast. Musk was born in South Africa and was once on an H-1B visa.

Bannon has previously cast the world’s richest man as a “parasitic illegal immigrant” and an “oligarch,” who will abandon Trump when he deems him no longer useful. Bannon didn’t criticize Musk at CPAC and instead faced scrutiny for making a straight-arm gesture on stage that critics on the right and left compared to a Nazi-style salute. Bannon said he was giving the crowd a wave.

A few miles away, at a Washington hotel near the White House, more than a thousand anti-Trump activists and thought leaders gathered at the Principles First Summit and laughed repeatedly as another billionaire, Mark Cuban, charged that Trump was “overselling” and Musk’s actions so far were not helping people who voted for the Republican president.

“Elon is going to make his job a thousand times harder,” Cuban said using expletives to accuse Musk of not caring.

Trump on Saturday posted on Truth Social that he “WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM GET MORE AGGRESSIVE.” During his speech, Trump trivialized complaints that Musk does not have an official role in his government despite his strong influence on decisions during his first month in office.

“People said ‘well, what official position does he have?’ I say patriot,” Trump said.

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York and Bill Barrow in Washington contributed to this report.