Elon Musk's support for Donald Trump, explained

It's no exaggeration to say that Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is former President Donald Trump's biggest fan – and supporter – in the 2024 election.

He literally and comically jumps at Trump's side at rallies. He tweets (often with dog whistles and misinformation). And to the dismay of some, he let Trump tweet too.

In the spring, Musk launched a political action committee called America, recruited other high-profile rich people from his Rolodex, and then threw another $75 million of his own money into the pot. According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, America PAC spent more than $100 million to re-elect Trump and sent hundreds of canvassers to conduct one-on-one interviews with voters in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

And of course, this week Musk promised to give away $1 million a day until the election to registered swing state voters who signed his PAC's petition, only to reportedly receive a letter from the Justice Department warning that the Competition could take place in violation of federal election law.

As Musk's politics move ever further to the right — or at least, as Vox's Zack Beauchamp writes, toward “a certain kind of edgelord bigotry that often veers into debunked conspiracy theories” — it's worth asking what he makes of it all Deal expected. An appointment to an unnamed new Commission on “Government Efficiency”? Immeasurable power over the authorities that want to regulate his companies? Or, unlikely, a tax break?

What does loyalty to Trump – or anyone else who courts the former president’s favor – bring him in the end?
I spoke to Vox senior reporter Whizy Kim, who has been covering Musk, his fans, lawsuits and even his text messages since the months leading up to his purchase of Twitter in 2022, to understand where Elon Musk the man, the media mogul, is , and the politically ambitious demagogue overlap. What does Musk really want? And if he gets it, what will it mean for the rest of us? (Our conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for length.)

Lavanya Ramanathan: If you look back at the moment Elon Musk bought TwitterAnd if you look at it now in the current context where he's trying to invest heavily in politics, do you see any parallels?

Whizy Kim: I don't think it's a coincidence that Elon Musk decided to buy Twitter and then slowly became more political. He now has a huge megaphone. He is the owner of a website that is still used by many people, especially for news-related content. So I think there is a direct connection between his speech about how Twitter should be this public “town square” where everyone can have their beliefs heard and where freedom of expression is respected, and today when he has reintroduced many bans, are accounts including Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene and other inflammatory figures. If you visit X today, you'll also see a lot more right-wing content on the site than you did a few years ago.

Since then, the way Americans perceive Elon Musk has changed significantly. Aside from Twitter's declining value and number of users, you've written about his fanboys, the people who were really looking for him – mostly young men. Is he still really influential with this set?

In the past he was considered more of a liberal hero. Not that he always supported Democratic candidates and politicians, but he was someone who popularized electric vehicles. When I once spoke to his former fans, many of them said how drawn they were to his passion for climate change and the environment. He cared about the future of humanity. And they saw him as a kind of mythical heroic figure, a kind of Tony Stark. They admired how much he seemed to serve civilization, not just at Tesla but even at SpaceX, and how much he wanted to advance humanity's mission beyond Earth.

And the more he talked on Twitter, especially about his political views, the more they realized he could be very volatile. He could really attack anyone who criticized him. Several people have told me that it doesn't seem appropriate for a CEO of several large companies to act childish and immature when someone might be making a good argument.

I hear a lot of similarities between him and Donald Trump there. What do these two men have in common?

When it comes to their personalities and their worldview, what really struck me in the X conversation they had in August is that they both come from backgrounds where they feel personally offended. Trump spoke in many places about how unfairly his opponents had acted against him, all these criminal cases against him, these trials because they didn't want him to win the election. Both were frequent critics of the media. Elon Musk has also spoken about how the old media is really biased and not spreading the truth. They could kind of look at each other and say, ‘Yeah, you understand me.’ We were both unfairly attacked.”

And what is their end game here? How does Elon Musk benefit from being associated with Trump and having a financial stake in Trump's victory?

Under the Biden administration, Elon Musk has believed that many of these regulators are staffed by people who keep a close eye on corporate misconduct. His companies have been investigated or fined by various government agencies, be it the Labor Board, OSHA, the SEC or the Department of Transportation, and Elon Musk believes this is unfair. Even if he admits that his companies didn't follow safety regulations, he'll think, “Well, these safety measures are stupid anyway.” I think I know best. I run my company. I am an expert in these areas. The government is just being slow and slowing us down.

One of the things he proposed during the Trump interview was some sort of government efficiency commission. And Trump was kind of like, oh yeah, that's a good idea…and maybe you can help make it happen. Essentially, such a commission would cut the budgets of many regulatory agencies.

Trump and Musk are portraying this as creating a government that is more sensible and efficient with its budget, but in reality it could also be used to flush the budgets of agencies that target his companies. If he has Trump's ear, he might say, “If you're going to put a new person on the labor board, maybe it should be someone who's friendlier to business than to workers.” That's one possible type of alliance they're making could.

We know that Silicon Valley billionaires often keep their involvement in politics secret. What Elon Musk has done is really shine a light on the billionaire donors of big corporations and the way they operate in the political sphere so that it's easier to see. Where does this end for Musk if Trump wins or if Trump doesn't win?

I do think that he will continue to express himself more politically, because he has achieved a true miracle. It's harder to go back when there's a long history of him appearing in front of Trump audiences, officially endorsing him, and so on.

Elon Musk is the evolution of what began with Peter Thiel. When Thiel first came out as this mega-conservative donor, people thought, “Wow, he's so outspoken and vocal in a world that tends to be more liberal.” Now we have Elon Musk, we have David Sacks and all these other personalities from Silicon Valley trying to elect Trump.

But obviously one of the reasons these wealthy, influential figures try to stay quiet is because they want to take advantage of both sides, right? Elon Musk has been so vocal about being pro-Trump and criticizing Biden and Kamala Harris. If Kamala Harris wins, is there an opportunity for Elon to come back and say, 'Hey, let's still work together somehow?' That's going to be a much more difficult path.