Elon Musk Is Already Doing Exactly What He Said He Would

Lower than per week after the election outcomes had been known as for former president Donald Trump, his centibillionaire backer Elon Musk is already doing what he promised: taking an lively position in shaping the federal government beneath a second Trump administration.

Throughout the marketing campaign, Musk emerged as certainly one of Trump’s greatest backers and his most zealous advocate in Silicon Valley. His political motion committee, of which he was the first funder, spent $200 million to help the Trump campaign. However he additionally hit the marketing campaign path drumming up help within the essential battleground state of Pennsylvania, made an appearance with Trump at a rally, stumped for Trump on Joe Rogan’s well-liked podcast, hosted a livestream on X (which he owns), and used his platform and the ability of his personal celeb to push the marketing campaign’s speaking factors and boost propaganda claiming Democrats would enable unauthorized immigrants to vote.

In his first administration, Trump famously made governing a household enterprise, bringing his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner into outstanding positions. Musk, according to Trump’s granddaughter Kai, has now apparently reached “uncle” standing, showing in a household photograph (and apparently refusing to leave). It does seem that Musk might be closely concerned in no matter comes subsequent. And his posts on X, in addition to his early post-elections interactions with Trump, clarify what that may appear like.

Musk, who has apparently joined Trump’s calls with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Serbia president Aleksandar Vučić, and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, appears poised to have some form of position within the administration. In September, Trump stated he would create a government efficiency commission with Musk—whose enterprise empire advantages extensively from authorities contracts and subsidies—on the helm. On Sunday, Musk reshared a post envisioning a Trump administration that focuses on “deregulation (defanging the SEC, FTC, and others), authorities spending cuts (making room for the personal sector), tax cuts, and a deal with technologically enabled innovation,” including the remark, “Nice.” Musk also called for “guaranteeing that maniacally devoted small-government revolutionaries be part of this administration!”

And already, Musk is starting to weigh in on staffing choices for the second Trump administration and beyond. On Sunday morning, Musk launched a ballot asking customers who needs to be the brand new Senate majority chief, in line to succeed the outgoing minority chief, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Customers appeared to overwhelmingly vote for MAGA favorite Senator Rick Scott of Florida. When Trump introduced that New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik could be his choose for UN Ambassador, Musk took to X to weigh in, saying, “Elise is superior, but it surely is perhaps too dicey to lose her from the Home, not less than for now.” Reporting from the Financial Times revealed that Musk is trying to set up his personal loyalists and backers into the federal government, significantly individuals like Steve Davis, CEO of the Musk-founded Boring Firm, and has reportedly asked Trump to appoint SpaceX staff to the Department of Defense.

In one other publish together with a video of Nationwide Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher from a TED Speak she gave in 2021, three years earlier than she took over the group, Musk asks, “Ought to your tax {dollars} actually be paying for a corporation run by individuals who suppose the reality is a ‘distraction’?” In a publish shared over the weekend, Musk described the Department of Education as “not precisely nice worth for cash.” (Undertaking 2025, a highway map created by the Heritage Basis for a second Trump administration, requires eliminating the Division of Schooling). In all, Musk has advocated for $2 trillion in spending cuts—greater than the federal authorities’s complete spending in fiscal 12 months 2023 on all discretionary outlays together with protection, according to the Congressional Price range Workplace.