The neofascist tech oligarch was solid out of Trump’s interior circle, however his cash and affect are nonetheless omnipresent.
Elon Musk addresses a MAGA rally in Washington on the eve of President Donald Trump’s inauguration final 12 months.
(Jim Watson / AFP through Getty Pictures)
Final June, the connection between President Donald Trump and his high political benefactor, Elon Musk, appeared to be in shambles. Wrapping up his 180-day tenure as a “particular authorities worker,” Musk had stepped down from the cost-cutting Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE), which had secured for the world’s richest mogul even larger energy (and a few very beneficial authorities knowledge). Musk’s shut involvement with the agenda of the second Trump administration had prompted critics to name it the “Trump-Musk White Home”—however the now-sidelined tech oligarch appeared to have change into the identical form of out of date Trump crony that Rex Tillerson or Mike Pence had been within the wake of Trump’s first time period.
Regardless of all of the chaos Musk fomented at DOGE by unleashing a corps of twentysomething engineers to wipe out payrolls and companies underneath dodgy AI-driven knowledge raids, he did not sufficiently handicap the executive state or nuke authorities spending as he had pledged to. Trump had additionally determined to not decide Musk’s shut ally Jared Isaacman to be NASA administrator—a key submit for a tech oligarch with a bevy of presidency rocket-launch contracts and aspirations to go to Mars—due to Isaacman’s historical past as a donor to Democratic political campaigns. Issues have been getting frosty.
Musk, as is his wont, was posting hysterically late into the night time on X. Quite than attacking destitute migrants or trans Democrats, Musk was now concentrating on Trump, whom he accused of varied betrayals. The tech mogul claimed to be particularly outraged over Trump’s “Massive Stunning Invoice” that vastly expanded authorities spending whereas slashing taxes—a measure that Musk noticed as a “disgusting abomination” sure to balloon the nationwide debt. Lastly, Musk wrote on X, it was “time to drop the actually large bomb:@realDonaldTrump is within the Epstein information. That’s the actual purpose they haven’t been made public.”
Because the Division of Justice’s dissembling within the ongoing Epstein information farrago has demonstrated, Musk was in some sense right. However his supposed “actually large bomb” had a surprisingly small blast radius. It additionally appeared to lack the conviction of its poster: Musk ultimately deleted the message.
Musk made noise about starting an America Party to problem Trumpian spending, however it by no means went past an excellent PAC that appears destined to change into one other MAGA totem, on the right track to be folded into the mainstream GOP equipment. Whereas touting the work of Republican Consultant Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a libertarian Trump gadfly, Musk has in any other case continued to place his cash into high Republican organizations. He gave $15 million to a few Republican tremendous PACs simply earlier than he threatened to start out his America Social gathering.
Regardless of being a vindictive president with huge powers at his disposal, Trump did nothing to retaliate in opposition to Musk after he started talking out. There was some public bickering, together with Trump threatening to “terminate” Musk’s authorities contracts. The president and a few of his allies described Musk as an erratic drug addict. However the Musk-Trump relationship was simply mended, no less than as a mixed political undertaking. Their handshake reunion on the Charlie Kirk memorial was a reminder of how shortly transactional political relationships will be repaired—and that Trump and Musk, who traded barbs properly earlier than the 2024 election, have accomplished this earlier than.
Present Difficulty
With an eye fixed towards stopping any blue wave within the 2026 midterms, Musk is constant to shovel cash behind the MAGA electoral juggernaut and different administration priorities. Axios just lately reported that Musk attended a meeting with Vice President JD Vance and numerous Trump advisers to debate midterm donations and political technique. Susie Wiles, the influential Trump chief of workers who had just lately described Musk as a ketamine addict in an interview with Self-importance Truthful, was additionally there.
So regardless of the general public furors which have hounded the Trump-Musk alliance, the deeper alignment of pursuits is obvious. Musk wants authorities contracts and subsidies—which have amounted to $38 billion up to now, according to an exhaustive Washington Post investigation. The Division of Protection and the Area Drive want SpaceX’s rocket launch capabilities. Trump and the Republican Social gathering want Musk’s cash—after raking in some $290 million of it within the 2024 cycle—and the propagandistic energy of X, which shouldn’t be underrated. And nobody actually wants an overblown public media conflict (that, given previous outcomes, would most likely be poorly leveraged by Democrats however may fracture an more and more fragile MAGA base).
Since Musk left DOGE and implied that the president was a pedophile, his corporations have continued to accrue beneficial contracts, whereas SpaceX has cemented itself because the premier space-launch automobile for an administration that want to colonize every little thing from Greenland to outer area. In 2025, SpaceX acquired contracts from the US Area Drive value greater than $6 billion. The Division of Protection continues to make use of Starlink, SpaceX’s Web service constructed on 1000’s of small satellites crowding low-earth orbit, and handed out no less than $200 million in contracts for xAI’s Grok, Musk’s Hitlerian, deepfake-crafting chatbot. That software program will quickly be built-in into navy networks, Division of Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth bragged. Different authorities departments that made offers to make use of Grok have been slower to roll out the software program, citing a need for more testing.
In comparison with his colleagues Peter Thiel and David Sacks—each pivotal gamers within the rise of the tech proper and the funneling of large quantities of money from Silicon Valley to Republican pursuits—Musk was late in coming to reactionary techno-fascism. A centi-billionaire who dominated over a big enterprise empire, he was not deeply concerned in electoral politics earlier than 2020. That modified because of the social, financial, and political upheavals surrounding Covid—in addition to the private ordeal of his daughter Vivian Wilson popping out as trans and publicly disowning him. In response, Musk promptly disowned each social liberalism and democracy itself. He theorized a brand new public menace that he dubbed the woke thoughts virus and commenced setting his sights on controlling public discourse and the very best ranges of presidency. And in his shambolic manner, he’s been fairly profitable at it.
Musk’s habits could also be terribly chaotic and inconsistent, filled with unattainable guarantees about technological glories to come back and threats to create political organizations that by no means graduate past X posts. However he nonetheless has the zeal of the convert and limitless assets. In his grievances—and in his social and enterprise networks—Musk is firmly enmeshed within the far-right MAGA undertaking underwritten by a brand new tech aristocracy that has little regard for the essential tenets of electoral democracy. For now, as 2026 approaches, Musk’s pro-Republican donations and rhetoric are already flowing firmly behind the president and his get together’s prerogatives. The one query is how far the world’s richest man will go.
