Elon Musk’s gamble on Donald Trump pays off

“A star is born: Elon,” said Donald Trump in a lengthy shout out to his biggest donor while claiming victory in the US presidential race on Wednesday morning. 

Trump’s impending win ushers in a new era for Musk — already the world’s richest person with a $260bn fortune — whose gamble on a knife-edge US election paid off as he is set to become one of the president’s most influential political and business advisers.

Musk’s promised role as head of a new Department of Government Efficiency will give the billionaire sweeping powers to recommend deep cuts to what he deems a “vast federal bureaucracy . . . holding America back in a big way”. 

Musk has also vowed to champion deregulation and will gain influence over US policy on artificial intelligence, space exploration and electric vehicles — all sectors that he has a personal stake in through his leadership of xAI, SpaceX and Tesla.

“He’s a character, he’s a special guy, he’s a super-genius,” Trump said of Musk on Wednesday. “We have to protect our geniuses, we don’t have that many of them.”

Earlier in the evening, Musk posted a photograph of himself carrying a sink into the Oval Office, an offbeat reference to a similar photo that he tweeted when he entered X just ahead of acquiring the social media platform for $44bn in October 2022.

Another picture on Tuesday showed him huddled in conversation with Trump at an election night party at Mar-a-Lago in Florida with the caption: “The future is gonna be so 🔥 [fire emoji].”

Musk — a self-declared “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 with Trump’s campaign on issues such as immigration and regulation, distaste for the mainstream media and what he dubbed “woke” politics.

Musk publicly endorsed Trump hours after he survived an assassination attempt on July 13 and steadily committed more time and resources to his re-election.

He contributed more than $100mn to the pro-Republican America Pac, hosted town halls in key states such as Pennsylvania, and gave away $1mn a day to voters who signed his petition in favour of free speech. On election day, he bussed Amish voters to polling stations who were unable to drive themselves.

Musk has gained a huge return on that investment — Trump’s victory and by adding billions to his net worth as Tesla’s stock rose nearly 13 per cent in pre-market trading on Wednesday.

In the months leading up to the vote, Musk wielded his own megaphone — X — as its owner and the most popular account with more than 200mn followers. He flooded the platform with pro-Trump messaging, allegations about election fraud and warnings that Kamala Harris would destroy America should she win the White House.

Over the course of 24 hours on Tuesday, he tweeted nearly 200 times, according to an analysis by the Financial Times, racking up about 955mn views, after averaging more than 100 posts a day in the month leading up to the vote. 

During an interview with conservative media personality Tucker Carlson on Tuesday evening, Musk said: “My philosophy is you play, play to win, and not by half measure.” 

Critics have argued that Musk has injected bias into the platform’s algorithms and amplified far-right narratives and conspiracy theories with little or no evidence, at the same time as cutting back its moderation capabilities and fact checking.

Some have warned that Musk became one of the biggest purveyors of election misinformation and conspiracies in the pre-election period, pushing claims of potential voter fraud, for example. An analysis by fact-checking group PolitiFact of 450 X posts by Musk in the first two weeks of October found a wealth of misinformation, which received nearly 679mn views and more than 5.3mn likes.

But Musk’s electioneering has won plaudits from Trump’s inner circle and libertarian tech allies, who argue that his extraordinary intervention has bolstered Republican voices and brought transparency to politics.

In a podcast on Tuesday, Donald Trump Jr said: “I don’t think this race would even be close if it wasn’t for what Elon Musk is doing with X and showing people what’s going on.”

Shaun Maguire, a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and serial Musk backer and Trump supporter, wrote on X: “The turning point was Elon buying Twitter”.

The X chief may bring with him to the White House a cast of allies from Silicon Valley, including tech investor and podcaster David Sacks and Palmer Luckey, co-founder of defence tech start-up Anduril, to whom he is already making promises. Musk replied to Luckey on X that it was “Very important to open DOD/Intel to entrepreneurial companies like yours”, referring to the US Department of Defense and intelligence services.

Investors are also betting that Musk’s own companies will stand to benefit. Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said even if EV subsidies were withdrawn by Trump — a noted sceptic of the technology — “Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched in the EV industry and this dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-subsidy environment”.

Even before the election result emerged, Musk made it clear he would play an active role in US politics for years to come. During a livestreamed Q&A as he flew on a private jet from Texas to watch the results with Trump at his Florida residence Mar-a-Lago, Musk pledged to continue financing his America Pac whatever the outcome.

The X chief said the lobbying group would “aim to weigh in heavily on the midterms” in 2026 and seek to influence elections at the district attorney and judicial level around the country.

“Something needs to be done to counter the damage that [George] Soros has done to the American system,” said Musk, in a reference to the billionaire financier who is a prominent supporter of liberal and progressive causes. “We have to have DAs that protect the citizens of their cities. It is just insane that we have so many of our city DAs that don’t prosecute crime.”

On the livestream, Musk fleshed out plans for a role leading a mooted Department of Government Efficiency — which he has nicknamed Doge in a reference to the meme token coin he promotes on X — in a second Trump administration. The Tesla chief said he wanted to cut a “vast federal bureaucracy [that] is holding back America in a big way”.

“We’re going to do a comprehensive review of all the government agencies . . . there’s a lot of duplicate responsibility where multiple agencies actually have overlapping portfolios,” Musk said. “There’s a lot of people that work for the government that we just need to transition them to more productive roles in the private sector.”

Musk said the cuts would be done in a “humane way” and floated the idea of paying government employees for two years while they searched for new jobs. He also said he wanted to see term limits imposed on bureaucrats and to see a wide range of rules significantly scaled back.

“We still want regulations, they just need to be necessary. I liken it to referees on a field. You don’t want to have no referees, but you don’t want to have more referees than players,” he said. “That’s crazy.”

Additional reporting by Cristina Criddle in San Francisco