Elon Musk’s debut in politics

That great genius of a friend of mine”: as soon as Donald Trump was elected, this is how he defined Elon Musk. And the bet of the head of Tesla and X on the former tycoon’s victory in the American presidential elections paid off. Now he is preparing to become a powerful political and business advisor to the new president: this opens a new era for Musk, who is already the richest person in the world with assets of 260 billion dollars. His promised role at the head of a new Department of Government Efficiency – which he has nicknamed Doge in reference to the meme token he promotes on “.

And not only that, Musk will aim to support deregulation and influence US policy regarding artificial intelligence, space exploration and electric vehicles. As the count began yesterday, Musk posted a photo of himself carrying a sink into the Oval Office, an unusual reference to a similar photo he tweeted when he joined X shortly before acquiring the social media platform for 44 billion dollars in October 2022.

Another photo showed him talking to Trump at an election night party at Mar-a-Lago in Florida with the caption: “The future will be like this” with a fire emoji. As FT recalls, Musk – a self-described “free speech absolutist” who said he had previously voted for Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – has moved sharply to the right in recent years. He aligned himself with Trump’s campaign on issues such as immigration and regulation, disgust with the mainstream media and what he called “woke” politics.

He then publicly supported Trump hours after the attack on July 13 and has consistently committed time and resources to his re-election. He has contributed more than $100 million to America Pac, a pro-Republican association, and has hosted civic halls in key states such as Pennsylvania.

From those investments Musk obtained a huge return, not only for having bet on the winning candidate but also because his company Tesla is reporting double-digit gains on the stock market. His endorsement translated into an avalanche of messages on average of over 100 posts per day in the month preceding the vote. Last night, during an interview with conservative journalist Tucker Carlson, Musk said: “My philosophy is that you play, you play to win, and not by half measures.”

Critics have argued that Musk has also instilled bias into the platform’s algorithms and amplified far-right narratives and conspiracy theories with little to no evidence, while reducing his moderation and fact-checking capabilities. An analysis by fact-checking group PolitiFact of 450 of Musk’s posts in the first two weeks of October found a large amount of misinformation, which received nearly 679 million views and more than 5.3 million likes.

But his support of the election has won plaudits from Trump’s inner circle and allies who say his extraordinary intervention has strengthened Republican voices and brought transparency to politics. The X chief may bring with him to the White House a cast of Silicon Valley allies, including tech investor and podcaster David Sacks and Palmer Luckey, co-founder of defense technology start-up Anduril.