Author: Simon Shuster, Time; Translated by: Deng Tong, Golden Finance
Who did we just elect? There were two names at the top of the Republican ballot: Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. But parts of this frantic November have left the impression that someone else has our collective destiny in his hands.
We’ve come to know him in a variety of roles—the man who bought Twitter and fired more than half its employees, the inventor who revived the space program, the automaker whose new trucks made kids stop and stare on the sidewalk. Suddenly, Elon Musk has entered the political arena, hosting rallies, directing government appointments, and setting the agenda for the next president of the United States.
For more than three years, he has been one of the richest, most powerful men in the world. Markets have soared and plummeted on his tweets. Astronauts have flown aboard his spacecraft. The military has marched on signals from his satellites. Conspiracy theories have gone mainstream through his embrace. But only in the spotlight of these elections has the full scope of his influence been revealed.
Not since the days of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate who powered Roosevelt’s rise nearly a century ago, has a private citizen been so prominent in so many aspects of American life, now incorporating its politics into the force field of his will. Standing next to him, even Trump seemed almost awed, more a companion than a boss, for the planet and its challenges were not big enough for him.
Photo illustration provided by Time magazine (Source: NurPhoto/Getty Images)
For now, they act like partners, bound together by the favors they trade and their shared desire to undermine the institutions of government. They may command with one voice for now. But their agendas don't align on everything. Both are willful, impulsive, and used to being in control. What happens if they start to clash?
Musk may not prevail in this battle. History is littered with the wreckage of kingmakers who went to war with the leaders they appointed. No matter how much wealth or influence Musk accumulates, the tools of national power will remain in the hands of the president, and if he decides to use them against the billionaire who helped return him to the White House, things could get messy.
Ultimately, the durability of their partnership may depend on Musk’s motivations: What drives him to become a MAGA prophet? If it’s the money he wants, then mission accomplished.
His wealth soared by more than $50 billion in the week after the election, peaking at more than $320 billion, as investors went wild for Tesla stock. But wealth has never been Musk's obsession. The fact that he's betting his fortune on lunar passion projects, like building greenhouses on Mars, is proof enough that his dreams are different from those of your average Klingon on Trump's starship. (Golden Finance Note: Klingons are a warlike alien race in the fictional universe of (Star Trek))
People close to Musk say his ultimate goal hasn’t changed since he founded SpaceX, his rocket company, in 2002. (Investors in the company include Marc and Lynne Benioff, owners of Time magazine.) His favorite T-shirt reads: Occupy Mars. “It’s all about this mission,” a member of Musk’s social circle recently told him about his plans. “He just realizes that controlling the U.S. government budget, directly or indirectly, will get us to Mars in his lifetime. Doing it privately will be slower.”
That doesn’t mean American taxpayers will foot the bill for Musk’s dreams of interstellar travel. But the public does tend to pay when eccentric dreamers run government. Millions of Americans, from retired factory workers to debt-ridden graduates and newborns, benefit from the social programs that Musk has pledged to cut. Despite posting multiple tweets a day to his 205 million followers, Musk has declined to answer reporters’ questions, including this one, since he became an adviser to the president-elect. He hasn’t explained his contacts with U.S. adversaries, from China to Russia to Iran. Nor has he addressed the conflicts of interest that arise from playing a key role in a government whose businesses are under investigation by regulators.
So far, Trump seems happy to play along. In his victory speech on November 6, he spent four minutes praising Musk, a "super genius" who helped him run a ground campaign in Pennsylvania, reportedly paying canvassers to knock on 11 million doors and hiring vans to take the Amish to the polls. "We have a new star," Trump cheered from the Florida stage. "A star is born — Elon Musk!" It wasn't until about 19 minutes into the speech that the president-elect returned to the teleprompter and remembered to thank his voters.
Musk’s significance to the Trump campaign goes far beyond the $120 million he invested, the on-the-ground projects he built, or the social media boost he provided. For many of the young people who flocked to Trump, Musk was an ideal embodiment. He injected ingenuity and possibility into familiar, nostalgic acts. If Trump’s promise to destroy corrupt institutions excited supporters, Musk represented the promise to create new things and solve difficult problems. Trump didn’t look that old at the rallies, with the Diablo-playing edgelord bouncing around him. While Trump’s opponents portrayed his team as a bunch of fools, the greatest innovator of our time, with a record of pulling off outlandish schemes, was promising $2 trillion in spending cuts, making things more difficult for his opponents.
No matter how often Democrats remind us that Trump’s fortune comes from inherited wealth, multiple bankruptcies and decades of corporate shenanigans, they can’t deny Musk’s achievements as a businessman. Even Senator Bernie Sanders, the scourge of the billionaire class, sidestepped his criticism in a recent podcast: “Elon Musk is a very, very aggressive, capable businessman, and what he’s accomplished is impressive. He says I can do more in a week than the government does in five years, and in some ways he’s right.”
At a time when confidence in government is at a low ebb, many voters want a capable outsider who’s cool and independent and knows how to take a massive machine and make it leaner, faster, and more efficient. Musk’s commitment to the American bureaucracy has created both momentum and cover for cost-cutting on a scale Washington hasn’t seen in years. That agenda didn’t make much headway during Trump’s first term as president. Millions of people rely on government for their jobs, and on the protections regulators provide from predatory businesses, like the ones that keep us abusing opioids and cigarettes to treat our asthma. But small-government Republicans will be eager to follow Musk’s lead and get involved in ugly budget battles over federal waste and bloated benefits. Many Americans will support them.
The most persuasive argument Musk made during the campaign wasn’t on Joe Rogan’s show or on stage at a Trump rally. It was on a launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, where Musk’s aerospace company wowed the world by capturing a returning rocket with a pair of robotic arms. If the man who did this supports Trump so passionately, couldn’t Trump have done some of the things he promised?
A lot of voters seemed to think so, especially the young men whom Musk was targeting with his bravado. “The most important factor here is that men need to vote,” Musk told Rogan on the eve of the election. The next day, when 60 percent of white men voted for Trump, Musk tweeted, “The cavalry has arrived.” But his appeal went far beyond the manosphere. It also touched a large swath of voters who were put off by Trump’s character but excited by his policies. These people, TV pundits said, needed a “permission structure”; Musk provided that to suburban women like Betsy Stecz. When she lined up for his October rally in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, she said, “Well, I can hold my head up and say: I am not ashamed to vote for Donald Trump.” In her view, the reason was Musk.
Given his role in the victory, Musk probably expected something in return. But his status in Trump’s transition has reportedly unnerved some acolytes. Musk spent much of November camped out at Mar-a-Lago, weighing in on Cabinet picks and advising Trump on policy priorities. He played golf with the president-elect, sat courtside with him at an Ultimate Fighting Championship match and posed for photos with the Trump family; one grandson raved on social media that Musk had achieved “uncle status.” Musk coined a different term for his position: “first partner.”
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr. (right) watch UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden in New York City on November 16, 2024. Kena Betancur—AFP/Getty Images
Even that is an understatement. The leaders of Turkey and Ukraine let Musk listen in on their calls with Trump. An Iranian envoy accused of trying to assassinate Trump reportedly met with Musk to discuss de-escalating tensions. (Iran’s Foreign Ministry has denied the meeting.) When House Republicans invited Trump to a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, Musk followed them in Trump’s motorcade, wearing a “GUEST 1” sticker on the window of his car.
That’s when Trump tapped him to lead a new entity called the Department of Government Efficiency. Its acronym, DOGE, is a nod to a dog-themed cryptocurrency that Musk promoted as a joke. But its mission is serious. Trump claims it will “dismantle” the federal bureaucracy and “reorganize” its agencies. “This will send shockwaves through the system,” Musk said.
It could also give Musk leverage over the many agencies that oversee his work. Weeks before Election Day, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it was investigating Tesla’s self-driving cars after a crash. In June, California regulators ordered Tesla to “correct ongoing air quality violations” at its Fremont factory. Tesla has said its cars are safe and its facilities meet environmental standards. SpaceX has also clashed with the Federal Aviation Administration, which Musk threatened to sue in September. A New York Times review found that his company faces at least 20 regulatory battles and investigations from “every corner of the government.” Musk and multiple representatives declined to comment or respond to questions for this article, including about potential conflicts of interest.
He has yet to explain what principles will guide him in his purge of the bureaucracy. DOGE co-director Vivek Ramaswamy ran on a pro-business, libertarian ticket in the last Republican primary. Musk’s political leanings, by contrast, are harder to pin down. This summer, he called himself a “historically moderate Democrat.” He has called climate change the defining challenge of our time. When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, Musk waited in line for six hours to shake his hand.
His relationship with Trump was often rocky. They had very different views on tariffs, and Musk resigned from his White House adviser position in 2017 after less than six months in protest of Trump's climate policies. Five years later, Musk said it was time for Trump to "drive off into the sunset," prompting a strong response. "Musk should focus on getting himself out of this Twitter mess where he's owing $44 billion for something that may be worthless," Trump said.
Trump had a point. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter made no obvious business sense. He paid at least twice as much as the company was worth through 2022, then spent weeks destroying its revenue streams and cashing out on its talent. He said that under his leadership, the company’s headcount has shrunk from 8,000 to about 1,500. Some of his posts on the platform, which he renamed “X,” have been characterized as interludes of corporate self-inflicted wounds. One referred to anti-Semitic theories as “the actual truth.” (He later apologized.) Another shared conspiracy theories about the hammer attack that left the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hospitalized with a fractured skull. In response, dozens of companies, including Microsoft and Coca-Cola, have pulled their ads from the platform. “Don’t advertise,” he told them on stage at a conference last fall. “If someone wants to blackmail me with ads, blackmail me with money, then go away.” Fidelity, the investment firm, assessed in October that X had lost nearly 80% of its value over the past two years.
Clockwise from top left: Mark Seliger for Time Magazine, Mark Mahaney for Time Magazine, Nigel Buchanan for Time, Tim O'Brien for Time
Musk doesn’t seem to care. Even without most of its employees, the platform continues to function, frequently topping the list of the most downloaded news apps in Apple’s App Store. Major advertisers have returned. For some observers, all of this is enough to cheer Musk’s acquisition as a masterstroke of corporate efficiency. “What Elon did with Twitter is he came in, cleaned up the house, and now it’s running better than before,” said one member of Musk’s social circle. “So the sentiment is that hopefully Musk will do the same thing with the U.S. government.”
It’s a tall order. Even fiscal hawks balked at Musk’s promise to eliminate $2 trillion in federal spending. That would require cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and other parts of the social safety net. Musk warned the nation to prepare for a period of “temporary hardship” as those cuts take effect. But it’s unclear whether he’ll be able to make them. DOGE will remain outside the government and won’t have the power to fire federal employees. Many budget experts expect it to do the same as countless blue-ribbon panels that have tried and failed to pressure politicians to cut programs favored by their constituents. When it comes to identifying waste, fraud, and abuse, Congress doesn’t need help: It already has a watchdog arm, called the Government Accountability Office, that’s doing the job.
Many of DOGE’s early fans say they recognize the limits of its potential but celebrate it nonetheless. “Yes, a government efficiency department may be a pipe dream that could end up being as essential as Monty Python’s Department of Silly Things,” Wall Street Journal columnist Andy Kessler wrote on Nov. 17. “But even if Musk’s DOGE cuts just a bit of the bloat and saves a few hundred billion dollars, it will be worth it.”
On the campaign trail, Musk spoke repeatedly about the need for the U.S. to live “honestly” and “within its means.” But if his social media platform is any guide, his goals may have less to do with efficiency and more to do with ideology. His stated goal for buying Twitter fits with one of his favorite reasons for supporting Trump: He says he wants to save free speech in America. “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy,” he told Joe Rogan on the eve of the election. “Once you lose free speech, you lose democracy. Game over. That’s why I bought Twitter.” Multiple reports and studies have concluded that under his stewardship, the platform has become a haven for hateful and harmful content, in part because he fired its content moderation team.
When asked to explain his rightward shift, Musk often refers to the "workmind virus," his term for the leftward shift in American society that, in his view, has given rise to identity politics, cancel culture, and allegedly rampant online censorship. His resentment of these forces is not just political. During the pandemic, one of his children sought gender-affirming medical care, which Musk said he was deceived into approving. His transgender daughter, now 20 and estranged from her father, legally changed her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson in 2022. In a July podcast, Musk said his child "is dead, killed by the woke virus. I vow to eradicate the workmind virus from now on."
Wilson posted her response the next day: “For a dead bitch, I look pretty good.” On Nov. 5, as the election results became clear, Wilson posted another message: “Blame the damn politicians and oligarchs who let this happen,” she wrote. “Take out your anger on them.”
In ancient Greek, the word oligarchy means “rule of the few.” Its earliest critic was Aristotle. In the fourth century B.C., the philosopher described it as a situation in which “the propertied classes controlled the government.” In medieval Venice, the leader of the oligarchy ruled for life, with the same title that Musk gave to his new department: Doge.
Elon Musk speaks at a rally for former US President and presidential candidate Donald Trump. Sasha Leka – Rolling Stone/Getty Images
The purest modern manifestation of this system was in Russia in the 1990s, when a handful of businessmen acquired control of the national economy during the chaotic transition to capitalism. The Russian name for oligarchy is semibankirshchina — the rule of seven bankers.
The most powerful of them was Boris Berezovsky, who used his media properties to help Putin win his first election in 2000, hoping the new president would share the spoils of power. Instead, the two began to quarrel. The Russian government soon forced Berezovsky into exile and confiscated his television network. Bankrupt and lonely, the oligarch died in 2013 at his mansion in the English countryside. Authorities ruled it a suicide. To this day, his former media channels still carry messages from the Kremlin.
Alex Goldfarb, one of Berezovsky's closest associates who now lives in New Jersey, follows Musk and Trump's footsteps with a mixture of familiarity and trepidation. "An oligarchy seems to be forming here, too," he said. "In the early years under Putin, the oligarchs did everything they could to fight the state," Goldfarb said. "Here we seem to have two oligarchs, Musk and Trump, working together to take over the state."
The outcome may depend on how this new duopoly treats the institutions they will soon control. If the goal is to hone them into leaner, more effective tools of governance, the public could benefit from reshaping a system long hobbled by bureaucratic weakness. But Trump is also using these tools the way Putin has in Russia — to benefit his friends and sideline his enemies.
Musk has much to gain from this arrangement. As long as he sticks to his role as “first partner,” he can probably expect to be able to easily steer clear of the regulatory agencies Trump has appointed throughout the administration. His clearest path to Mars could therefore run directly through the Oval Office. But what benefits will ordinary Americans get, other than watching the spectacle of his success?
The institutions that provide us with health care, keep our water clean, and educate our children are not meant to be run like businesses. They are not built to turn a profit, but that does not make them any less valuable, especially to the citizens least able to pay. If these institutions are obsolete in Musk’s drive for efficiency, the hardship for those who rely on government support will not be temporary. For them, the pain could be devastating, and none of Musk’s promises of an interstellar future can help them solve today’s problems.