Lower than every 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 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 help within the essential battleground state of Pennsylvania, made an look with Trump at a rally, stumped for Trump on Joe Rogan’s in style podcast, hosted a livestream on X (which he owns), and used his platform and the ability of his personal movie star 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 outstanding positions. Musk, in keeping with Trump’s granddaughter Kai, has now apparently reached “uncle” standing, showing in a household picture (and apparently refusing to depart). It does seem that Musk can 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 to be like 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 publish 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 deal with technologically enabled innovation,” including the remark, “Nice.” Musk additionally known as for “making certain 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 past. 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 favourite Senator Rick Scott of Florida. When Trump introduced that New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik can be his decide for UN Ambassador, Musk took to X to weigh in, saying, “Elise is superior, however it may be too dicey to lose her from the Home, no less than for now.” Reporting from the Monetary Occasions revealed that Musk is trying to set up his personal loyalists and backers into the federal government, notably individuals 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 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 company run by individuals who assume the reality is a ‘distraction’?” In a publish shared over the weekend, Musk described the Division of Schooling 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 Schooling). In all, Musk has advocated for $2 trillion in spending cuts—greater than the federal authorities’s complete spending in fiscal yr 2023 on all discretionary outlays together with protection, in accordance to the Congressional Price range Workplace.
