It’s no exaggeration to say that Elon Musk, billionaire owner of X and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is former President Donald Trump’s biggest fanboy – and sponsor – in the 2024 election.
he Literally, and hilariously, jump Next to Trump at the rally. he to tweet (Including, often, dog whistles and wrong information) and to the dismay of some, He also allowed Trump to tweet.
In the spring, Musk launched a political action committee, called Simply America, lining up others High-profile rich people from his RolodexAnd then an extra throw $75 million Pot his own money. According to Federal Election Commission filings, America PAC has spent more than 100 million dollars About Trump getting re-elected Hundreds of canvases are being sent to talk to voters in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
And of course, this week, musk Promised a million dollars a day Registered swing-state voters who signed his PAC’s petition until the election, only to reportedly receive a letter from the Justice Department warning that the contest could violate federal voting laws.
As Musk’s politics move to the right — or at least, as Vox’s Jack Beauchamp writes, “towards itA certain kind of edgelord bigotry that frequently veers into conspiracy theories” – It’s worth asking what he wants to get out of the whole deal. Appointment to some nameless new “government efficiency” commission? Unspoken power over the agency his company wants to control? Or, perhaps, A tax break?
Does loyalty to Trump make him — or anyone else on the former president’s side — ultimately?
I spoke with Vox senior reporter Whizzy Kim, who talks about Musk, his fans, the lawsuit and even His text message From the months of his 2022 Twitter purchase, Elon Musk is trying to understand where the man, the media mogul and the politically ambitious demagogue intersect. What does the mask really want? And if he gets it, what does that mean for the rest of us? (Our conversation has been condensed for length and lightly edited.)
Lavanya Ramanathan: When you look back at the momentElon Musk bought TwitterAnd now considering the current context of how he’s now trying to invest heavily in politics, do you see the parallels there?
Whizzy Kim:I don’t think it’s an accident at all that Elon Musk decided to buy Twitter and then gradually become more politically vocal. He now has a huge megaphone. He owns a site that is still used by many people, especially for news related things So I think there’s a direct connection between him talking about how public Twitter should be in the first place.”Town square“Where everyone can hear their beliefs, where freedom of speech is respected, where he reinstated many banned accounts, including Trump’s,Marjorie Taylor Greenand other incendiary figures. If you were to visit X today, there is much more right-wing content on the site than you would see a few years ago
Since then there has been a big shift in how Americans perceive Elon Musk. Apart from the fact that Twitter has gone down in value and user numbers, you write about her fanboys, who really look up to her – mainly young people. Is he still really dominant with this set?
In the past, he must have been seen as a benevolent hero. Not that he always supported democratic candidates and politicians, but he was the man who popularized the electric vehicle. when ispoke to his former fans for a pieceMany of them spoke about how they were drawn to his passion for climate change and the environment. He thought about the future of humanity. And they make him look like a mythical heroic figure, like Tony Stark. They admired how much he was doing in the service of civilization, not just with Tesla, but even with SpaceX, and wanted to further humanity’s mission beyond Earth.
And then the more he spoke on Twitter, especially about his political views, they realized he could be very volatile. He could really beat up anyone who criticized him. Several people have told me that this doesn’t seem appropriate for a CEO of several large companies, to be childish and immature in response to someone might make a good point.
I heard a lot of similarities between him and Donald Trump there. What do these two men have in common?
Personality-wise, and just in terms of their worldview, is what I really noticedFrom that X conversation they hadIn August they both came from a place of feeling personally angry. Trump has talked a lot about how his opponents have been unfairly implicated, all these criminal court cases against him, these trials, because they don’t want him to win the election. Both of them have been frequent critics of the media. Elon Musk also talks about how the legacy media is really biased and doesn’t platform the truth. They can look at each other and say, “Yeah, you got me. We’ve both been unfairly attacked.”
And what is their end game here? What does Elon Musk stand to gain from an association with Trump and now a financial stake in Trump’s victory?
Under the Biden administration, Elon Musk felt that many of these regulatory agencies were staffed with people who were keeping a close eye on corporate misconduct. Whether his companies have been investigated or fined by various government agenciesLabor Board,OSHA,SECorDepartment of TransportAnd Elon Musk sees it as unfair. Even if he admitted that his companies didn’t follow security rules, he’d be like, well, those security measures are stupid, anyway. I think I know best. I run my company. I am an expert in this field. The government is just being unrealistic and slowing us down.
One of the things Trump proposed during the interview was some kind of government efficiency commission. And Trump was like, oh, yeah, that’s a good idea … and maybe you can help run it. Essentially, such a commission would reduce the budgets of many regulatory agencies.
Trump and Musk are creating the kind of structure that is meant to create a government that is smarter and more efficient about budgets, but really, it could potentially serve as a way to flush the budgets of agencies that come after his companies. If he had Trump’s ear, you know, he could say, “Well, if you’re going to put a new person on the labor board, it should be friendlier to business than to workers.” This is one possible type of alliance they could form.
We know that the billionaires, that Silicon Valley, are often more secretive about their involvement in politics. What Elon Musk is doing is really shining a light on big business billionaire donors and the way they operate in the political arena, so it’s easy to see. Where does it end for Musk, if Trump wins, or if Trump doesn’t win?
I think he will continue to be more vocal politically, because he has opened a can of worms. It’s even harder to go back when Trump has a long record of coming out to the crowd, officially endorsing him and all that.
Elon Musk is the evolution of what started with Peter Thiel. When Thiel first came out as this mega-conservative donor, people were like, wow, he’s so open and vocal in a world that keeps getting more liberal. Now, we have Elon Musk, we have David Sachs, all these other Silicon Valley figures who are trying to elect Trump.
But apparently, one of the reasons these rich, powerful people try to keep quiet is because they want to play both sides, right? Elon Musk is pro-Trump and has been vocal in criticizing Biden and criticizing Kamala Harris. If Kamala Harris wins, is there a chance Elon can come back and say, “Hey, let’s still work together in some capacity?” That’s going to be a much harder road.
