President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk have become an inseparable pair. Since Trump’s re-election, the world’s richest man — and one of Trump’s campaign donors — There was a shadow follower him at his residence in Florida. Tech billionaire takes center stage in incoming administration 2 trillion dollar reduction commitment From the federal government budget.
It’s not uncommon for a whirlwind relationship to develop between a politician — in this case, the president-elect — and a financier. This is how much the donor himself stands in the spotlight. By Tim Walz joke That Musk, not JD Vance, was Trump’s running mate, becomes more true every day. “We haven’t really seen anyone directly involved in a campaign unless they’re a candidate,” said Jason Seawright, a Northwestern University political science professor and co-author. Billionaires and Stealth Politics.
That makes Musk an oddity among his billionaire class, who almost always use their influence quietly.
He is showing a bold alternative to the stealth politics of other members of the super-rich, urged by a president-elect who accepts donations. Millionaires are a seat at the table. A private citizen can seize power in full view of the public – as long as they are rich enough and have enough fans.
“We live in an era of what I call ‘in-your-face oligarchy,'” says Jeffrey A. Winters, a professor at Northwestern who studies oligarchs and inequality Twenty years ago, it was a challenge to get his students to understand that there are oligarchs in the United States. Now, he says, “I have a hard time accepting the idea that students have a democracy.”
Buying political power is nothing new—but Musk’s brazenness is different
American politics has always been dominated by its most well-heeled citizens, holding office themselves, using their money to help put their favorite candidates into office or shape policy. Benefactors are often well rewarded With access to the levers of government, whether it is adopting a Kushi Ambassador Or even cabinet positions, being generous Government contractsacting as Informal advisorsteering Controversial foreign policy decisions, Or take one more Shady but No less influential roles.
Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris both enjoyed one Abundance of super rich supportersonly 10 millionaires gave 44 percent All the money to support Trump. It’s part of why the word “aristocracy“Being thrown aroundNot for the first time though. “Going back more than 2,000 years in history, oligarch has always referred to people who are empowered by great wealth,” Winters explains. “It’s always a small part of the population, but they’re able to convert their wealth into political influence.”
Musk has donated nearly $130 million to help elect Trump and other Republicans, and currently has no official appointment in the Trump administration — instead, he will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE for short) with fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy. The two heads of the Efficiency Commission aim to cut at least $2 trillion Government waste — such as cumbersome regulatory agency budgets that slow down the building And turn on Rocket (It is worth noting that there are Already an organization tasked with trying to ensure that the federal government runs efficiently.)
Barbara A. Perry, co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, told Vox that he couldn’t think of another example in American history like Musk. “It seems like Musk is taking on a much bigger role than anyone else who’s come close to playing his role,” he says. Musk has no prior experience of similar political appointments, nor is he resigning from any of his companies, despite the enormous influence he wields over the agencies that regulate them.
In 2016, the biggest Trump donor drawing scrutiny was hedge fund manager Robert Mercer. The Mercer family gave more than $15 million to support Trump’s race, and their substantial investment in the right-wing news site Breitbart was influential. Trump’s presidential campaign. The parallels to Musk’s ownership of social media site X and the role it played in spreading it are interesting. right wing Conspiracy and misinformation to voters, as well as Malik’s clear Trump endorsement.
But Mercer’s contribution came behind the scenes. He rarely gives interviews and little is known about his personal life. That’s the case with most wealthy donors — like Elon Musk, Constantly posting on X How does he see the world, who is outside him?
Musk could be a sign of how the billionaire’s political strategy is changing
In Billionaires and Stealth PoliticsFirst published in 2018 after Trump’s election, Seawright and fellow Northwestern researcher Matthew J. Lacombe and Benjamin I. Page studied how this tiny subset of the super-rich engaged in political activity. What they found is that while most don’t speak publicly about their opinions, conservative billionaires spend more while talking less; Liberal billionaires spent less, but they were more likely to talk.
Take Mark Cuban, who has become one of Harris’s most visible billionaire boosters this year, but he wants to say Did not donate at all His campaign. On the flip side, Musk has gotten all the attention as a Republican megadonor this cycle, indeed top donor There was a man whose name you may never have heard of: Timothy MellonA banking heir that the public knows very little about
Stealth has been the modus operandi for as long as rich Americans have been tiptoeing the scales of democracy — until Musk arrived.
Kasturi isn’t the only vocally partisan conservative billionaire donor today, though—there are figures like the hedge fund manager, too. Bill Ackman And crypto investors Tyler And Cameron Winklevoss Those who have no qualms about sharing their politics online — but he is the most emblematic of this shift. Kasturi isn’t just a financial backer of Trump and the media mogul behind the increasingly helpful hand of right-wing messaging — he’s an influencer whose following most politicians running for office would probably aspire to.
Corporate executives today are more than just bosses. They are considered leaders who publish memoirs offering extensive lessons on how to succeed in life and are often held up as idols. Musk is the prime example. Although he has now lost some of his core fans, his words are still gospel to most young people, who think Musk will fight against the liberal establishment. It is fueled by an ecosystem of social media Fan account its circulation Wise quoteHis idyllic AI-generated photos Achieving fake heroic featsAnd most of all, through Musk’s own words as he puts it on his personal X account. On X, Musk currently has over 200 million followers; At a Trump town hall in Pennsylvania in October, Musk It was clear At least a portion of the crowd came to catch a glimpse of the famous billionaire.
The nature of Musk’s public persona is also important: like Trump, he portrays himself as a populist who understand your disappointment. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was created as a counter to the “fake news” pushed by legacy media outlets, intended to create a town square that encourages all voices. According to Musk, even budget-cutting ideas for DOGE will be crowdsourced (with the help of volunteers Work 80 plus hours one week free) and broadcasting Presents the world’s richest man as a man of the people.
Some might argue that Musk is “no different than the kind of oligarchs we see in many other countries,” said Benjamin Soskis, a historian and senior research associate at the nonprofit Urban Institute’s Center for Philanthropy. “What I think is different about this is that Musk is doing it with a whole lot of public respect and a kind of democratic legitimacy to it.”
For his fans, in other words, Musk’s position as the incoming president’s right-hand man is not the dirty tricks of a billionaire using money to access power. It almost reads like a “philanthropic commitment” and an example of “doing good,” Soskis said. (Musk is famously there Wasn’t very philanthropic.) If in the past the elite compulsion of billionaires manifested itself in the establishment of libraries and hospitals, Musk has shown it by claiming to be a voice for the people – a megaphone for their anger and frustration.
When asked why a billionaire like Musk might feel so comfortable declaring their political worldview, Seawright offered a theory: Perhaps there’s a threshold of wealth where the consequences — like public backlash or losing a few billion dollars — don’t matter.
If so, this has troubling implications for the trajectory of American society. Our billionaires are certainly enjoying unprecedented heights of wealth. Tesla’s stock has risen since Election Day, with Musk’s personal fortune now estimated at nearly $300 billion. But it is worth noting that the centenarians were born very recently; Musk, along with many other tech leaders, saw his fortunes balloon during the pandemic. In 2019, he was worth relatively little $22 billion — which is about half of what he paid to buy Twitter in 2022.
Kasturi is unprecedented for the fact that there has never been a political donor, adviser, and celebrity that all converged under the gravitational pull of a $300 billion fortune. While wealth has always bought you access to America, Musk’s is one of the most obscure examples we’ve seen. And for all the trepidation one might feel after witnessing him waltz into the White House, there’s something instructive about it, too. It expresses in the clearest terms the mechanism of power in American democracy.
