The Tesla CEO, Trump's most influential campaign supporter, has emerged as a key power broker in the presidential transition.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is diving deeper into the world of politics after Donald Trump's election victory, reaching out to the president-elect and offering him information on key management hires, according to US media reports.
Musk, who donated $119 million to a pro-Trump political action committee and campaigned aggressively for the Republican, has made almost daily visits to Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida since Election Day. Tuesday, spending time with the president-elect. and his family, CNN reported.
Elon achieving uncle status 😂 pic.twitter.com/vufSffziZN
—Kai Trump (@KaiTrumpGolfs) November 10, 2024
Musk is making his voice heard in important staffing deliberations, according to CNN, while using the social media platform X, which he owns, to promote his political views.
“It definitely gets inserted all the time. That's his style,” technology journalist Kara Swisher told CNN. “I've heard Trump people call me and say, 'Oh, wow. This is strange.' Forks.”
Over the weekend and on Monday, Musk posted endorsements for Florida Sen. Rick Scott to lead the Senate and invited the public to suggest candidates for Trump's Cabinet.
The billionaire also shared posts by former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, whose name has been floated for an administration position, advocating to “radically shrink” the government.
“The obstacles are overcoming the Kafkaesque nature of the rules that govern this vast bureaucracy and ensuring that maniacally dedicated small-government revolutionaries join this administration!” Musk wrote in a post, responding to Ramaswamy's suggestion.
In fact, the obstacles are overcoming the Kafkaesque nature of the rules that govern this vast bureaucracy and ensuring that maniacally dedicated small-government revolutionaries join this administration.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 11, 2024
Musk's access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago, which CNN says has become the de facto core of Trump's presidential transition, has given him enormous influence in a way that could benefit his businesses, analysts said. .
His electric vehicle company, Tesla, has already seen a boost with its shares rising 14 percent the day after Trump's election victory and the threat of tariffs on Chinese imports that are likely to block the country's competitors.
“We have seen lobbying efforts. We have seen super PACs [political action committees]but this is a different level that we have never seen before,” Gita Johar, a professor at Columbia Business School, told The Guardian. “There will be some quid pro quo in which he [Musk] will benefit.”
While Trump previously floated the idea of naming Musk “cost-cutting secretary,” he is unlikely to take any job that requires Senate confirmation or disrupts his business, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fischer reported.
Instead, Musk could serve on a “special committee where he would still have enormous access but would not be subject to the government's ethical standards,” according to CNN.
With such close ties to the president-elect, Musk is likely to push hard for deregulation, which he has repeatedly blamed for slowing innovation at his companies, including SpaceX and Tesla.
“America is a nation of builders,” Musk wrote in X on the day of Trump's election victory. “Soon you will be able to build freely.”
