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Musk helped Trump get elected to a new presidential term. Why does a billionaire need this and what does the founder of SpaceX and Tesla count on?

Billionaire Elon Musk has firmly entered Donald Trump's inner circle. He spent presidential election night with him and even posed for a family photo after the victory. And the newly elected head of state himself called Musk a “super genius” in his victory speech to voters. Trump supporters call Musk one of his most valuable allies and want him to take on some important government office in the United States.

Musk is so close to Trump that he participated in his telephone conversation with Vladimir Zelensky. Apparently, the businessman has significant influence on the elected US President. At the same time, he continues to disseminate information about the war in Ukraine, refuted by experts. “New-Europe” tells how Musk benefits from cooperation with Trump.

UPDATE NOVEMBER 13
Trump named Musk co-head of the new Department of Government Efficiency. In the original, its abbreviation (DOGE) repeats the name of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, which the businessman supports. Another co-head of the department was former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

How Musk campaigned for Trump

Before 2024, Elon Musk was not such an ardent supporter of conservatives. So, in 2016, he voted for Hillary Clinton and argued that Trump was “not fit” to be president. This did not stop the Republican from inviting the businessman to an economic advisory council early in his term. A year later, Musk left it: he explained his decision by disagreement with environmental policy and the US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. In 2020, Musk publicly supported the Democrats and voted for Joe Biden.

But in May 2022, the billionaire publicly announced that he could no longer support the Democratic Party and called it “the party of discord and hatred.” Since then, he has funded the Republican Party and promoted right-wing views on the social network X (formerly Twitter), which he bought in October 2022. On July 13, 2024, Musk announced that he had become a convinced Trump supporter and called for voting for him. For four months, the businessman actively campaigned for Trump in X.

During the election race, Musk spread fakes about Kamala Harris and senior Democrats created using neural networks.

So, in July of this year, he published a video on his X profile in which the fake Harris called Biden “decrepit” and stated that he “doesn’t know how to run a country.”

And in August, a businessman claimed that the US Federal Emergency Management Agency was not helping victims of hurricanes Helen and Milton in Florida and North Carolina, since it had allegedly already spent all available funds on migrants. He considered that the federal authorities do not specifically allocate money to Republican states. The agency rejected all of Musk's accusations and called them misinformation. Analysts at the nonprofit Center to Counter Digital Hate estimate that Musk's numerous fake election posts have received more than 1.2 billion views.

Moreover, Musk did everything to attract as many people with right-wing radical views to X as possible. Thus, he does not prohibit the use of crude racist expressions against African-Americans and Jews, and right-wing organizations also freely advertise on his social network. Musk also unblocked the accounts of many people known for anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi views. Among them, for example, is influencer Andrew Tate, who, after Trump’s victory, announced his imminent return to the United States from Dubai.

Throughout the election campaign, Elon Musk presented X as a full-fledged competitor to liberal American media like CNN, NBC and The New York Times. After Election Day, he boasted that millions of Americans read news about the vote on his social network.

“Anyone who finds the election result shocking, whether in America or elsewhere, should reconsider their sources of information. This trend has been evident in X for several months.

but almost all of the traditional mainstream media were pushing a completely false reality. They lied to you,” the billionaire said .

Elon Musk supported Trump not only verbally. He became the largest donor to his election campaign: in total, the billionaire donated more than $130 million to the Republican Party foundation. According to The New York Times, Musk and a group of influential conservative financiers alsopoured more than $100 million into Building America's Future, a political nonprofit that campaigned against Kamala Harris and Democrats.

In October 2024, Musk's America PAC began collecting signatures for a petition in support of the First and Second Amendments of the US Constitution to prohibit attacks on freedom of speech and the right of Americans to bear arms. The billionaire promised to give $47 to anyone who recruited a resident of one of the seven swing states to petition. This allowed America PAC to collect voters' personal information to persuade them to vote for Trump. At the end of October, Musk increased the payout to $100 and began giving away a million dollars a day to those who signed the petition.

American media drew attention to Musk’s initiative. Many of them considered the payments to be actual bribery of voters, and the drawing of a million dollars to be an illegal lottery. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro even said that America PAC should be investigated. However, the Philadelphia court did not see a violation of the law in the petition and allowed Musk to continue the campaign.

The closer Election Day got, the more actively the businessman spoke at Republican rallies for Trump. He focused on Pennsylvania and urged voters not to vote Democratic. Elon Musk also gave an interview to journalist Tucker Carlson and participated in a podcast with Joe Rogan, who also publicly supported the Republican Party.

In his victory speech, Donald Trump emphasized that Elon Musk provided him with invaluable help.

“We have a new star - Elon Musk. He is a wonderful guy, we spent the whole day with him. He campaigned for me for two weeks in Philadelphia and various parts of Pennsylvania... He's a special guy, he's a super genius. We must protect our geniuses, we don’t have many of them,” the president-elect said .

What will he do in the White House?

Before the election, Elon Musk did not announce his desire to take any position in the new administration. Trump said Musk "doesn't want to be in the Cabinet." The billionaire himself claimed that he did not need recognition, salary, or official position. However, he will continue to support the Republican Party in the next elections.

Apparently, Musk really has no political ambitions. The businessman publicly stated that he could not become president of the United States, since he was born in South Africa, and did not apply for any political position. He himself wants to continue to work on “rockets and cars,” meaning the space company SpaceX and Tesla electric cars.

However, Musk dreams of heading a new commission, which he might call the Department of Government Efficiency. He called his goal a reduction in US federal government spending by $2 trillion. Trump supported the billionaire's idea. Moreover, Musk has already promised the president to land an American astronaut on Mars by the end of 2028.

However, the lack of political experience and official position does not prevent Musk from already participating in Trump’s important decisions and being his unofficial adviser. On November 6, the billionaire took part in Trump’s phone call with President Vladimir Zelensky. Two days later, he even declared that the war in Ukraine could end soon.

“The senseless killings will end soon. The time for warmongers to profit is over."

— Musk wrote on social network X.

NBC noted that there was no precedent in modern American history for any businessman to participate in presidential negotiations. He has been called a "second president" and a "shadow minister" who wants to monopolize American technology and media. And CNN wrote that Musk could be an unofficial intermediary between the United States and Russia: in the last few years, the billionaire has held secret negotiations with Vladimir Putin and Sergei Kiriyenko.

Musk's true role in the new US administration is still unclear. New York Times political analyst Maggie Haberman believes Trump is interested in having the world's richest man help him in negotiations. Musk's involvement in foreign policy alone could help the president-elect apply additional pressure on US allies and rivals. But it is impossible to say anything unequivocally about the importance of a businessman - at least until Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025.

What Trump's victory means for Musk

Since the election, Musk has strengthened his business empire. Tesla's share price alone rose 12%, increasing Musk's assets by $15 billion. Thus, the billionaire not only recouped the costs of the Trump campaign, but also received an impressive profit from it.

Trump's support was beneficial to Musk for another reason - cryptocurrency. The price of Bitcoin has reached an all-time high and exceeded $75,000. During the election campaign, the president promised to create a fund to store US assets in Bitcoin. It is known that Elon Musk kept at least $765 million in cryptocurrency.

Another financial benefit for Musk from Trump's victory is tax cuts for large corporations. In 2021, he publicly opposed the “billionaire tax” that Democrats wanted to introduce.

But the main thing Musk received with Trump’s victory was government contracts. Thus, the new administration may allow Tesla to introduce driverless electric cars into circulation and will continue to cooperate with SpaceX as part of the space program. Also

Trump's victory will benefit Musk's other assets, such as Starlink satellite systems, Neuralink brain computer implants, and The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company.

Trump's team can also help the social network X. In September, vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance said that the United States could stop funding NATO if European countries put pressure on Elon Musk's platforms. The new administration will likely place special emphasis on X.

Before Trump's victory, Musk jokingly said that he could be put behind bars if Kamala Harris wins. The billionaire obviously feels secure after the election. Over the next four years, his future looks bright. Time will tell what Musk expects next.