It is not particularly surprising that Tiffany Trump would see fit to publicly congratulate her father for his sweeping electoral victory this week. “Dad, we are so proud of you,” the president-elect’s youngest daughter wrote on X in a post accompanying a picture of the extended Trump family posing gleefully. With one exception. There, in the front row of the Trump tableau, is the lone outsider to this insular family: Tech billionaire and self-proclaimed “dark, gothic MAGA” acolyte Elon Musk.
That Musk, the wealthiest person in the history of the human race, would be welcomed into Donald Trump’s inner circle is a marked change from just two years ago when the Tesla CEO encouraged the once-and-future president to “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.” Since then, however, Musk has positioned himself as Trump’s biggest political booster, spending millions of his own personal fortune to secure the Republican ticket, while lending his (largely internet-based) cultural cache to the MAGA cause. It’s a gamble that’s paid off big for Musk, whose net worth jumped an estimated $20 billion in the hours following Trump’s victory.
Now, as Trump begins the process of reassuming executive control over the United States government, it is Musk perhaps more than anyone who stands to gain from his relationship with the president-elect. Beyond the billions of dollars in federal contracts Musk already controls, Trump has floated his name as a potential adviser to reduce what he’s deemed governmental waste in the incoming administration, as well. So where does Elon Musk go from here?
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Musk standing side by side with Trump on election night marked an “inflection point in an unprecedented metamorphosis” for the tech billionaire who has “vowed to turn his erratic but visionary ethos more fully to the nation’s politics,” said The Washington Post. Musk’s promise this week that his pro-Trump America PAC is “going to keep going after this election” to focus on the upcoming midterms and future political contests is an indication, Mother Jones‘ Anna Merlan said, of just “how far-reaching and consequential he aims to make his new political ambitions.”
While both Trump and Musk have “indicated it’s unlikely Musk will take on an official role” in the incoming administration, the billionaire arch-conservative has “embraced the idea of helming a ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE) aiming to cut $2 trillion or more from the federal budget,” Forbes said. At the same time, Musk stands to personally benefit from Trump’s administration, “given the executive branch’s outsized control over federal regulatory bodies,” said CNBC. He can now “look forward to regulators and intelligence agencies winding down some or all of the 19 known ongoing federal investigations and lawsuits” against his various companies and interests.
Beyond simply relieving regulatory and investigatory pressure, Musk is seeking to expand those interests as well; he has asked Trump to hire employees from his SpaceX rocket and satellite company as “top government officials — including at the Defense Department,” The New York Times said. The effort to “seed SpaceX employees into an agency that is one of its biggest customers” shows just how much Musk “wants to fill a potential Trump administration with his closest confidants” no matter how much his federal contracts “pose a conflict to any government role.”
What next?
With much of Musk’s fortune tied up in his ownership of Tesla, watch whether “government support for electric vehicles is now trimmed or cut off, as is likely with Trump’s victory,” CNN said. Even if so, “Musk’s wealth will remain firmly intact,” and the billionaire might even “benefit if government support for EVs ends” — a move that could “impact legacy carmakers much more than Tesla itself.” Similarly, Trump’s promise to levy astronomical tariffs on Chinese imports could “continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players from flooding the US market over the coming years,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives at Yahoo Finance.
As for any potential hands-on role in a Trump administration, Musk is unlikely to be a “predictable institutional player,” former GOP congressional candidate and venture capitalist Blake Masters said to The Washington Post. “The only thing you could predict is his involvement would be sort of less predictable and more tailor-made to the particular circumstances.”
