During his victory speech last Wednesday, supporters screamed Elon Musk’s name as US President-Elect Donald Trump stood onstage at his Mar-a-Lago resort, giving his winning speech. “A star is born – Elon!” acknowledged Trump. Amidst cheers and claps, Trump gushed about the tech tycoon sitting in the audience, saying “Only Elon can do this. He’s a special guy. He’s a super-genius. That’s why I love you Elon.”
The same day, Tesla’s shares rose by a whopping 15% adding about $25 billion to the fortunes of Elon Musk, the legendary tech tycoon who is the CEO of the electric vehicle maker. As Wall Street showed its confidence, the richest person on earth was busy posting a cheeky collage of himself in the White House, carrying a sink with the words ‘Let that sink in’, itself a play of what he’d done when he was close to finalising the deal to buy Twitter. He became not only the richest man in the world last Wednesday, but , more importantly, he also became the most powerful civilian in America.
Standing besides Trump
As an immigrant, Elon Musk cannot stand for presidential election in the US, so he has done the next best thing. In July, Elon Musk publicly supported Donald Trump, bringing with him at least $130 million in a pro-Trump campaign effort and more importantly X, a social media platform that quickly become a catchall for all Republican conservative conversations without censorship, and proved to be more important and powerful than Fox News for this election. What he also brought was his reputation as a successful businessman and time. He spent two weeks actively campaigning in the swing state of Pennsylvania, rousing young men, and gamifying voting. The pro-Trump political group that Musk formed, America PAC, offered registered voters in Pennsylvania $100 to sign petitions and a $1 million voter sweepstake. His active campaigning brought life to an aging, scandal-ridden former president and roused the younger generation of voters to go out in record numbers.
This audacious, risky way of functioning that borders on illegal, improbable or anti-regulatory is quintessential Elon Musk, the reason the tycoon has become a cult for ambitious people across the world. Over the last couple of decades, Musk has disrupted finance and electric cars, sent satellites and rockets up in space, and now wants to colonize and settle Mars (He frequently wore a t-shirt which said Occupy Mars during election campaigning). He continues to be successful, even as his companies are embroiled in lawsuits with federal agencies for reasons ranging from violations of environmental laws and consumer fraud to vehicle defects to violations of labor, civil rights, workplace safety and securities laws. He wades forward against all odds.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons that the citizens of the US, especially men of all races stood behind the Trump-Musk team. Both men have fallen in the ring and gotten back right up. Trump was almost bankrupt, pivoted to become a reality TV star, became a president, became a convict, lost an election, was shot at but stood right back up to show his supporters his resilience. Musk backed Trump – a risky move at the time – while struggling to get a flagging Tesla back on track, was kicked out of OpenAI, and took media backlash for his aggressive buy of Twitter (now X). This marriage of two alpha white men in the country – both sharp businessmen who like making bold, risky moves will change things. And perhaps that change is what made Americans vote for the duo, hoping the team would revive their flagging economy and streamline their government. As a supporter gushed on X: “No one can match those who were born to win!”
And Musk’s listening. As we write this, Elon Musk’s X profile says: “The people voted for major government reform”. In the last few months, he’s been very open about his ambitious plans for government reform in DC if Trump comes to power. Trump has already announced a “Department of Government Efficiency” with Musk in charge – to slash down federal spending by an ambitious $2 trillion perhaps by repeating the ruthless moves he made at Twitter.
What Musk is set to gain
Tesla’s share price is not the only thing that will go right for Musk, now that his pro-capitalist ally will take over the White House for the next four years.
Musk’s rocket company SpaceX is already an important contractor for NASA. Sending rockets into space for NASA is key for SpaceX which sell extra payloads on these rockets to private-sector players and loads up its Starlink satellites into low earth orbit – a business opportunity that will require regulatory compliance. Trump in the office may also also pushback any investigations that Musk’s business might face. As the executive branch controls federal regulatory bodies, regulators might start winding down 19 known ongoing investigations against Tesla, SpaceX and X.
Another hurdle that’ll probably be an easy one to pass now is in xAI which has a data center in Memphis that was the first in the world to connect 1,00,000 graphics processors together and attracted the ire of environmental regulators for its gas-powered generators. xAI could also get more energy resources to develop its power-hungry generative AI models.
Then there’s Tesla of course – which had been flagging this whole year as cheaper Chinese rivals gave it a run. Trump is likely to put tariffs on vehicle imports and make these Tesla competitors unaffordable in the US. Tesla is also struggling to get its driver assistance technology pass through regulators, which again is something that might go away with a new pro-technology government.
Most importantly, Musk can and will now sway the US government and the whole wide world. His mouthpiece, X, which only a year ago was a flagging company with its value down at 20% of $44 billion in 2022, has become the powerful media platform for Republican and conservative thought in the US. Musk used, what professor Timothy Graham at Queensland University of Technology called ‘attention management’ by keeping people busy with “a constant supply of allegations, rumours, conspiracy theories and unverifiable claims”.
What’s been fascinating in to observe in this election is that both Trump and Musk made no effort to hide the nexus between business, media and government – and we all accept it as something natural. Is it something that’s possible in a capitalistic government or is our acceptance a sign of the times we live in? The US 2024 election has been a big win for big money politics, social media dominance and brash, outspoken alpha personalities.
As Musk said to his followers after Trump won the election: “You are the media now.”
Shweta Taneja is an author and journalist based in the Bay Area.