Elon Musk formally endorsed Donald Trump for president on 13 July 2024, shortly after the president-elect survived an assassination try in Butler, Pennsylvania. Since then, Musk has turn into Trump’s most seen backer, and one in all his largest donors.
He injected greater than $130m of his personal cash right into a Trump political motion committee, funding promoting and get-out-the-vote operations. Many billionaires attempt to affect politics behind the scenes, however it’s unprecedented to do it so publicly: Musk shared a platform with Trump at rallies; he even decamped from his house in Texas to Pennsylvania, a vital swing state, the place he appeared at city corridor occasions and held a $1m day by day giveaway for pro-Trump voters. On election evening, he watched the outcomes are available with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
How useful was Musk’s backing?
It is not clear that Musk’s funding really had an affect on the race, although little question it did not harm the Republican floor marketing campaign. Way more precious was the broader enhance his public endorsement gave to Trump. Maga supporters have been visibly inspired that the world’s richest man, and one of many US’s main industrialists, had backed their candidate. Musk’s help, analysts argue, additionally created “a permission construction” for others, particularly different tech bosses, to come back out in help, which had been uncommon till the summer time.
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And when it comes to uncooked publicity, Musk has been priceless. He has greater than 204 million followers on X/Twitter, whom he has deluged with pro-Trump speaking factors in current months. He additionally put out hyperlinks permitting voters to register in swing states. In response to Wired, “one thing like 30 million folks noticed these posts, and a million folks clicked the hyperlinks”.
What’s in it for Musk?
Musk has just lately turn into a passionate anti-liberal campaigner. However past pushing his political agenda, he additionally stands to profit handsomely in enterprise phrases. Trump rewards loyalists, and Musk’s community of firms – operating from electrical vehicles and clear vitality (Tesla), to rockets (SpaceX), to satellites (Starlink), to social media (X), to AI (xAI), to brain-chip implants (Neuralink), to tunnelling (The Boring Firm) – are all affected in numerous methods by authorities coverage.
In response to Politico, as of final 12 months Tesla and SpaceX had racked up greater than $15 billion in federal contracts. Trump has boasted that Musk will ship a rocket to Mars throughout his administration, which might imply a large contract for SpaceX. Musk has already began to reap the advantages of a Trump second time period: Tesla’s inventory has shot up 39% to a 132-week excessive. Musk’s personal estimated fortune has grown by $54bn, to greater than $319 billion.
How does Trump see Musk’s position?
Trump has appointed Musk to guide a brand new “Division of Authorities Effectivity” (“Doge” additionally references a cryptocurrency primarily based on an web meme); Trump’s said ambition for this division is for it to “dismantle” forms. Musk is “poised to stay out the final word techno-authoritarian fantasy”, stated Franklin Foer in The Atlantic: being invited into authorities “to play the position of the grasp engineer, who redesigns the American state – and due to this fact American life – in his personal picture”.
He’s additionally prone to have a a lot elevated say in federal regulation, which regularly impacts his companies in ways in which he describes as “irrational”. There have been at the very least 20 investigations into his firms, together with 5 by the Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Security Administration into Tesla’s self-driving methods. Utilizing the time period “battle of curiosity” to explain all this sounds relatively “quaint”, stated Gita Johar of Columbia Enterprise Faculty.
What different coverage areas may Musk have an effect on?
He has emerged as a key participant within the Ukraine battle, as a result of Ukrainian forces depend on the Starlink community for his or her principal battlefield communications. Pentagon officers have been pressured to plead with the mogul in 2022 after some Ukrainian troops misplaced entry to Starlink. Musk has additionally endorsed pro-Kremlin peace plans; and there have been studies (denied by each events) that he has been in common contact with Vladimir Putin for the previous two years. He additionally made a shock look throughout Trump’s first telephone name after his re-election with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine final week. Musk’s hyperlinks to China have brought on concern, too. The nation is Tesla’s largest market after the US, accounting for 33% of all gross sales. Musk final 12 months repeated Beijing’s official line that Taiwan is an “integral half” of China, to the alarm of the Taiwanese.
How about his management of X?
When Musk purchased Twitter in 2022, for $44 billion, he vowed to make free speech central to the platform’s future. He purged the corporate’s requirements and misinformation employees, and eliminated some protections (guidelines towards “misgendering” trans folks have been scaled again). He additionally restored greater than 62,000 accounts – together with Trump’s. Liberals say he has modified it right into a “pro-Trump echo chamber”. Musk argues that he has merely made it extra impartial, and that his strikes symbolize a long-overdue problem to “mainstream media” attitudes.
How will the partnership proceed?
It’s prone to be unstable. Each Trump and Musk are thin-skinned, and fall out with folks simply; each like being the centre of consideration. “I feel you will need to remember the fact that the 2 of them could not be capable of coexist in the identical place,” stated the pundit Kara Swisher on CNN. “Elon may be very petulant, and so is Trump, and I do not assume Trump’s going to love the eye that Elon goes to seize for himself.” In the event that they do fall out, it’s prone to be spectacular. Each males are terrific grudge-holders, each have the world’s consideration, and neither is shy about taking his complaints public.
