Elon Musk loves Donald Trump. He’s been pretty much his biggest supporter – and patron – in the 2024 election, especially after Trump’s near-assassination in July. The man shows up at Trump’s rallies, jumps like a “dipshit” and yaps about how great he is and how he’ll save the country. It’s all very weird.
Anyway, we know how Musk has been supporting Trump: through social media posts and his America PAC which he has donated over $70 million, but we don’t really know why he’s doing it. Why would this man spend over $100 million just to get someone he likes elected? Would a Harris presidency really be that much different for the world’s richest man? In a new story, Vox takes a deep dive into exactly why Musk sees Trump as such a great match, and it’s not just because he’s cute and they both hate anyone who isn’t a cis white male.
The writer spoke with another Vox reporter, Whizy Kim, who has been reporting on everything Elon for years now, to try to figure out what he sees in the former president, what he really wants, and what he’ll do if he gets it. From Vox:
Personality-wise, and just in terms of their worldview, what I really noticed from the X conversation that they had in August was that they both come from a place of feeling personally aggrieved. Trump at many points talked about how his opponents had engaged unfairly against him, all of these criminal court cases against him, these trials, because they don’t want him to win the election. They’ve both frequently been critics of the media. Elon Musk has also talked about how legacy media is really biased and doesn’t platform the truth. They could sort of look at each other and say, “Yeah, you get me. We’ve both been unfairly attacked.”
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Under the Biden administration, Elon Musk felt that a lot of these regulatory agencies are staffed with people who are keeping a close eye over corporate misbehavior. His companies have been investigated or fined by different government agencies, whether it’s the Labor Board, OSHA, the SEC, or the Department of Transportation, and Elon Musk sees this as unfair. Even if he acknowledges that his companies didn’t follow safety regulations, he’ll be like, well, those safety measures are stupid, anyway. I think I know best. I run my company. I am an expert in these fields. The government is just clunky and slowing us down.
One of the things that 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 run it. Essentially, that kind of commission would slash the budgets of a lot of regulatory agencies.
Trump and Musk are sort of framing that as creating a government that’s more sensible and efficient about the budget, but really, it could also potentially serve as a way to flush the budgets of agencies that have been coming after his companies. If he has Trump’s ear, you know, he could say, “Well, maybe if you want to appoint a new person to the Labor Board, it should be someone more friendly to businesses, rather than to workers.” That’s a potential kind of alliance that they could form.
For Musk’s sake, he better hope this masterful gamit pays off. He’s really painted himself into a corner that’ll be hard to come back from if Trump loses on November 5:
I do think that he will continue to be more politically vocal, because he’s opened up a can of worms. It’s harder to go back when there’s a long record of him coming out for a Trump crowd, officially endorsing him, and all of that.
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[O]ne of the reasons why these wealthy, influential figures try to stay quiet is because they want to play both sides, right? Elon Musk has come out so vociferously as pro-Trump and criticizing Biden and criticizing Kamala Harris. If Kamala Harris wins, is there room for Elon to come back and say, “Hey, let’s still work together in some capacity?” That’s going to be a much harder road.
