Elon Musk officially endorsed Donald Trump for president on 13 July 2024, shortly after the president-elect survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. Since then, Musk has become Trump’s most visible backer, and one of his largest donors.
He injected more than $130m of his own money into a Trump political action committee, funding advertising and get-out-the-vote operations. Many billionaires try to influence politics behind the scenes, but it is unprecedented to do it so publicly: Musk shared a platform with Trump at rallies; he even decamped from his home in Texas to Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state, where he appeared at town hall events and held a $1m daily giveaway for pro-Trump voters. On election night, he watched the results come in with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
How helpful was Musk’s backing?
It’s not clear that Musk’s funding actually had an influence on the race, though no doubt it didn’t hurt the Republican ground campaign. Far more valuable was the broader boost his public endorsement gave to Trump. Maga supporters were visibly encouraged that the world’s richest man, and one of the US’s leading industrialists, had backed their candidate. Musk’s support, analysts argue, also created “a permission structure” for others, especially other tech bosses, to come out in support, which had been rare until the summer.
And in terms of raw publicity, Musk has been priceless. He has more than 204 million followers on X/Twitter, whom he has deluged with pro-Trump talking points in recent months. He also put out links allowing voters to register in swing states. According to Wired, “something like 30 million people saw these posts, and one million people clicked the links”.
What’s in it for Musk?
Musk has recently become a passionate anti-liberal campaigner. But beyond pushing his political agenda, he also stands to benefit handsomely in business terms. Trump rewards loyalists, and Musk’s network of companies – running from electric cars and clean energy (Tesla), to rockets (SpaceX), to satellites (Starlink), to social media (X), to AI (xAI), to brain-chip implants (Neuralink), to tunnelling (The Boring Company) – are all affected in various ways by government policy.
According to Politico, as of last year Tesla and SpaceX had racked up more than $15 billion in federal contracts. Trump has boasted that Musk will send a rocket to Mars during his administration, which would mean a massive contract for SpaceX. Musk has already started to reap the benefits of a Trump second term: Tesla’s stock has shot up 39% to a 132-week high. Musk’s own estimated fortune has grown by $54bn, to more than $319 billion.
How does Trump see Musk’s role?
Trump has appointed Musk to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” (“Doge” also references a cryptocurrency based on an internet meme); Trump’s stated ambition for this department is for it to “dismantle” bureaucracy. Musk is “poised to live out the ultimate techno-authoritarian fantasy”, said Franklin Foer in The Atlantic: being invited into government “to play the role of the master engineer, who redesigns the American state – and therefore American life – in his own image”.
He is also likely to have a much increased say in federal regulation, which often affects his businesses in ways that he describes as “irrational”. There have been at least 20 investigations into his companies, including five by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into Tesla’s self-driving systems. Using the term “conflict of interest” to describe all this sounds rather “quaint”, said Gita Johar of Columbia Business School.
What other policy areas might Musk affect?
He has emerged as a key player in the Ukraine war, because Ukrainian forces rely on the Starlink network for their main battlefield communications. Pentagon officials were forced to plead with the mogul in 2022 after some Ukrainian troops lost access to Starlink. Musk has also endorsed pro-Kremlin peace plans; and there have been reports (denied by both parties) that he has been in regular contact with Vladimir Putin for the past two years. He also made a surprise appearance during Trump’s first phone call after his re-election with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine last week. Musk’s links to China have caused concern, too. The country is Tesla’s largest market after the US, accounting for 33% of all sales. Musk last year repeated Beijing’s official line that Taiwan is an “integral part” of China, to the alarm of the Taiwanese.
How about his control of X?
When Musk bought Twitter in 2022, for $44 billion, he vowed to make free speech central to the platform’s future. He purged the company’s standards and misinformation staff, and removed some protections (rules against “misgendering” trans people have been scaled back). He also restored more than 62,000 accounts – including Trump’s. Liberals say he has changed it into a “pro-Trump echo chamber”. Musk argues that he has simply made it more neutral, and that his moves represent a long-overdue challenge to “mainstream media” attitudes.
How will the partnership proceed?
It is likely to be volatile. Both Trump and Musk are thin-skinned, and fall out with people easily; both like being the centre of attention. “I think it is important to keep in mind that the two of them may not be able to coexist in the same place,” said the pundit Kara Swisher on CNN. “Elon is very petulant, and so is Trump, and I don’t think Trump’s going to like the attention that Elon is going to grab for himself.” If they do fall out, it is likely to be spectacular. Both men are terrific grudge-holders, both have the world’s attention, and neither is shy about taking his complaints public.