It’s not notably shocking that Tiffany Trump would see match to publicly congratulate her father for his sweeping electoral victory this week. “Dad, we’re so happy with you,” the president-elect’s youngest daughter wrote on X in a put up accompanying an image of the prolonged Trump household posing gleefully. With one exception. There, within the entrance row of the Trump tableau, is the lone outsider to this insular household: Tech billionaire and self-proclaimed “darkish, gothic MAGA” acolyte Elon Musk.
That Musk, the wealthiest particular person within the historical past of the human race, could be welcomed into Donald Trump’s internal circle is a marked change from simply two years in the past when the Tesla CEO inspired the once-and-future president to “cling up his hat & sail into the sundown.” Since then, nevertheless, Musk has positioned himself as Trump’s greatest political booster, spending hundreds of thousands of his personal private fortune to safe the Republican ticket, whereas lending his (largely internet-based) cultural cache to the MAGA trigger. It is a gamble that is paid off large for Musk, whose web value jumped an estimated $20 billion within the hours following Trump’s victory.
Now, as Trump begins the method of reassuming govt management over america authorities, it’s Musk maybe greater than anybody who stands to realize from his relationship with the president-elect. Past the billions of {dollars} in federal contracts Musk already controls, Trump has floated his identify as a possible adviser to cut back what he is deemed governmental waste within the incoming administration, as properly. So the place does Elon Musk go from right here?
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Musk standing aspect by aspect with Trump on election evening marked an “inflection level in an unprecedented metamorphosis” for the tech billionaire who has “vowed to show his erratic however visionary ethos extra totally to the nation’s politics,” stated The Washington Publish. Musk’s promise this week that his pro-Trump America PAC is “going to maintain going after this election” to deal with the upcoming midterms and future political contests is a sign, Mom Jones’ Anna Merlan stated, of simply “how far-reaching and consequential he goals to make his new political ambitions.”
Whereas each Trump and Musk have “indicated it is unlikely Musk will tackle an official position” within the incoming administration, the billionaire arch-conservative has “embraced the thought of helming a ‘Division of Authorities Effectivity’ (DOGE) aiming to chop $2 trillion or extra from the federal finances,” Forbes stated. On the similar time, Musk stands to personally profit from Trump’s administration, “given the manager department’s outsized management over federal regulatory our bodies,” stated CNBC. He can now “stay up for regulators and intelligence companies winding down some or the entire 19 recognized ongoing federal investigations and lawsuits” in opposition to his varied corporations and pursuits.
Past merely relieving regulatory and investigatory strain, Musk is looking for to increase these pursuits as properly; he has requested Trump to rent workers from his SpaceX rocket and satellite tv for pc firm as “prime authorities officers — together with on the Protection Division,” The New York Occasions stated. The trouble to “seed SpaceX workers into an company that’s one in all its greatest clients” exhibits simply how a lot Musk “desires to fill a possible Trump administration together with his closest confidants” irrespective of how a lot his federal contracts “pose a battle to any authorities position.”
What subsequent?
With a lot of Musk’s fortune tied up in his possession of Tesla, watch whether or not “authorities help for electrical autos is now trimmed or reduce off, as is probably going with Trump’s victory,” CNN stated. Even when so, “Musk’s wealth will stay firmly intact,” and the billionaire would possibly even “profit if authorities help for EVs ends” — a transfer that would “impression legacy carmakers way more than Tesla itself.” Equally, Trump’s promise to levy astronomical tariffs on Chinese language imports may “proceed to push away cheaper Chinese language EV gamers from flooding the US market over the approaching years,” stated Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives at Yahoo Finance.
As for any potential hands-on position in a Trump administration, Musk is unlikely to be a “predictable institutional participant,” former GOP congressional candidate and enterprise capitalist Blake Masters stated to The Washington Publish. “The one factor you can predict is his involvement could be type of much less predictable and extra tailored to the actual circumstances.”
