Lower than every week after the election outcomes have been referred to as for former president Donald Trump, his centibillionaire backer Elon Musk is already doing what he promised: taking an lively function in shaping the federal government below a second Trump administration.
In the course of 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 assist the Trump marketing campaign. However he additionally hit the marketing campaign path drumming up assist within the vital battleground state of Pennsylvania, made an look with Trump at a rally, stumped for Trump on Joe Rogan’s fashionable 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 enhance propaganda claiming Democrats would permit 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 distinguished positions. Musk, in accordance with Trump’s granddaughter Kai, has now apparently reached “uncle” standing, showing in a household picture (and apparently refusing to go away). It does seem that Musk will likely 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 which may seem 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 type of function within the administration. In September, Trump mentioned he would create a authorities effectivity fee with Musk—whose enterprise empire advantages extensively from authorities contracts and subsidies—on the helm. On Sunday, Musk reshared a submit envisioning a Trump administration that focuses on “deregulation (defanging the SEC, FTC, and others), authorities spending cuts (making room for the non-public sector), tax cuts, and a concentrate on technologically enabled innovation,” including the remark, “Nice.” Musk additionally referred to as for “guaranteeing that maniacally devoted small-government revolutionaries be a part of this administration!”
And already, Musk is starting to weigh in on staffing choices for the second Trump administration and past. On Sunday morning, Musk launched a ballot asking customers who ought 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 favourite Senator Rick Scott of Florida. When Trump introduced that New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik can 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 Monetary Occasions revealed that Musk is seeking to set up his personal loyalists and backers into the federal government, notably folks like Steve Davis, CEO of the Musk-founded Boring Firm, and has reportedly requested Trump to nominate SpaceX employees to the Division of Protection.
In one other submit together with a video of Nationwide Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher from a TED Discuss 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 submit shared over the weekend, Musk described the Division of Training as “not precisely nice worth for cash.” (Undertaking 2025, a street map created by the Heritage Basis for a second Trump administration, requires eliminating the Division of Training). In all, Musk has advocated for $2 trillion in spending cuts—greater than the federal authorities’s whole spending in fiscal yr 2023 on all discretionary outlays together with protection, in accordance to the Congressional Price range Workplace.
