Dana Hull | (TNS) Bloomberg News
No billionaire did more to help Donald Trump win the U.S. presidential election than Elon Musk. The Tesla Inc. and SpaceX boss will now find out whether it pays off or he ends up getting burned.
Musk, whose growing political apparatus has already proved its mettle, will gain more than just an ally in the White House. Trump has floated giving him an official role cutting government spending — and with it the power to influence policy and the federal agencies that oversee his vast empire of companies.
“He’s a character. He’s a special guy. He’s a super genius,” Trump said of Musk while addressing his supporters overnight. “We have to protect our geniuses. We don’t have that many of them.”
Already, shares in Tesla are surging. The stock climbed as much as 15% in early U.S. trading as investors look to cash in on a Trump return to the White House. Musk also posted a chart early Wednesday morning the he said showed record usage of X, his social network.
“Let that sink in,” he said on X, posting a fake photo of himself carrying a sink into the White House’s Oval Office — a nod to when he brought a sink to Twitter headquarters after taking over the social media company.
In the last few months, Musk was Trump’s most aggressive surrogate. The world’s richest man propped up Trump on X, hosted town halls in the critical state of Pennsylvania and appeared at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally with even higher billing than the Republican’s own running mate, JD Vance.
Musk spent more than $130 million on Trump and down-ballot Republicans in competitive House races, vaulting him to the highest echelons of donors this election cycle. On Election Day, Musk voted in Texas and then flew on his private jet to Florida to watch returns with Trump and his family at Mar-a-Lago. His PAC posted a photo of him sitting shoulder to shoulder with Trump and Dana White, the chief executive officer of UFC, at the festivities.
“Musk is new to politics, but it means a lot for a billionaire and a tech mogul to go all in for President Trump,” said Jondavid Longo, the Pennsylvania state director of Early Vote Action, an organization dedicated to registering Republican voters. Trump’s win in Pennsylvania was key to his victory, helping him flip battleground states he had lost in 2020 but won in his first run for president in 2016. Musk donated $1 million to the group.
Musk has much to gain financially from the incoming administration. He oversees an empire of six companies, several of which are highly entangled with the U.S. federal government. SpaceX has become an increasingly vital partner to NASA and the U.S. Defense Department, with contracts worth billions. Tesla has staked its financial future on a pivot to autonomous robotaxis, a risky pursuit facing serious regulatory hurdles. X remains hugely influential.
Musk’s personal fortune swung wildly during Joe Biden’s four years in office, reaching as high as $340 billion and as low as $124 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Still, it has largely trended upward. As of Election Day, his net worth was $263.8 billion.
During the campaign, Musk pitched a job for himself running an agency in charge of …read more
Source:: The Denver Post – Politics
