Elon Musks Political Influence
By Jonathan MahlerI’m a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine.Over the course of the 2024 presidential campaign, Elon Musk went from dark-money donor to high-profile surrogate to unofficial chief of staff.He camped out at Mar-a-Lago after the election with the Trump family and hopped on Donald Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president.
He’s even played diplomat, meeting secretly in New York with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations.Last week, the president-elect named Musk to co-lead a department focused on government efficiency, a role that will put him in a position to recommend the hiring and firing of federal workers and the restructuring of entire agencies.But it’s clear that Musk’s influence could reach far beyond even this.He and Trump are in sync on a lot of issues (immigration, trans rights).
And although they diverge on some others (climate change and policies that push people toward electric vehicles), the world’s richest person has now allied himself with the leader of the free world whom he helped install in office, creating a political partnership unlike anything America has ever seen.In today’s newsletter, we will look at Musk’s agenda and ideology — and at what his influence in the new administration could mean for both him and the country.Big government dealsMusk previewed plans for his new job on the campaign trail.He said that the federal government’s $6.8 trillion budget should be slashed by at least $2 trillion and acknowledged that such draconian cuts would “necessarily involve some temporary hardship.” Slashing and burning is certainly one of his hallmarks: He laid off 80 percent of X’s staff after buying the company — then called Twitter — in late 2022.Musk has a lot to gain from a second Trump administration.His businesses are already entangled with the federal government, which awarded them $3 billion in contracts across numerous agencies last year.
His rocket company, SpaceX, launches military sat...