“A star is born – Elon!” »Donald Trump shouted early Wednesday morningthanking Elon Musk for helping him win the presidential election.
When you’re a star, they let you do itas Trump once saidtalking about mutilating women.
Now Trump and Musk, so-called stars, are a marriage made in some sort of living nightmare from the Book of Revelation. With Trump’s victory, both men appear to have put themselves beyond the reach of the law.
In recent months, as Musk, the world’s richest man, has invested millions in Trump’s campaign via its America PACTrump promised to bring Musk into government.
In September, Trump said he would create a “government efficiency commission” for Musk to lead. This task force would conduct a comprehensive audit of the finances and performance of the entire federal government, with the goal of tearing it to pieces, that is, “making it more efficient.”
“I would put (Musk) in the Cabinet, absolutely, but I don’t know how he could do that with everything he’s doing,” Trump also said. “But he could sort of, as the expression goes, consult the country and give you some really good ideas.”
“Really good ideas” that, let’s assume, won’t really hurt Musk’s bottom line, which is currently pegged at more than 285 billion dollars. (In the hours following Trump’s victory, Musk made $20 billion.)
For someone who controls so much private wealth to take a leading role in the U.S. government is to open the door to conflicts of interest so immense that, if Trump did not already pose such an urgent threat to survival of the republic, he would be everything we talked about.
For any other businessman, having the chance to serve your country might seem like a good idea. But Musk has long held vast governmental power and exerted malign influence in Washington for years.
To see just a sliver of what Musk could do during a second Trump term, look at the current state of affairs. NASA and the Pentagon now I depend so deeply on Musk that they could barely survive without SpaceX, which controls American space launches and Internet satellites. In 2023 alone, Musk’s companies signed $3 billion in contracts with 17 federal agencies, including the departments of State, Energy and Agriculture.
Musk too holds a top secret security clearancewhich gives him access to information that could seriously harm national security if disclosed.
And yet, Musk allegedly conspired – no other word, in my opinion – with the leaders of powers extremely hostile to the United States.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk had secret conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin since 2022. The conversations reportedly included Putin’s favor request for Chinese leader Xi Jinping: Musk should avoid activating his Starlink internet service for Taiwan.
Taiwan, of course, is an ally of the United States, although unofficial. China and Russia are officially not. For anyone, at any level of government, plotting with adversaries would almost certainly be feasible. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson called for an investigation.
But since this particular schemer is Elon Musk, there was no intervention. Musk is an extremely free man, tell cable TV viewers about taking ketamine and turning Twitter-now-X, which still has about 300 million daily users, into its own Pravda — a dark MAGA propaganda site so influential that Rolling Stone dubbed Musk and biggest purveyors of disinformation online.
In the early hours of Election Day, Musk shared a video on which glorified January 6 and brought up references to QAnon. IBM, Disney and Coca-Cola advertised on Twitter; on
More more than 20 recent federal investigations or critics have targeted Musk’s companies. Some are fueled by concerns about the safety of Tesla cars and the environmental damage caused by SpaceX rockets. Tesla has also faced a series of racial discrimination lawsuits and harassment in its factories, union interference and wage theft.
In October, the Washington Post published evidence that Musk, after coming to Palo Alto on a student visa in 1995, overstayed his visa and worked illegally in the United States for years. For Musk, who these days echoes Trump’s nativist rage toward undocumented immigrants, revealing this secret could have meant deportation — and even loss of U.S. citizenship.
Now, with Trump’s victory, any attempt at intimidation by federal agencies or immigration watchdogs seems almost ridiculous. Deportation? Loss of citizenship? Investigations, even?
Of course, for other immigrants who have overstayed their visa. Of course, for Trump’s political enemies.
But absolutely not for Musk, the mega-American, the brightest star in Trump’s sinister firmament.
Virginia Heffernan is the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. Its newsletter can be found at virginiaheffernan.substack.com.
