Comment / October 30, 2024

Elon Musk Eyes a Shadow Presidency

The world’s richest man is expecting a major return on investment for his lavish support of Trump’s campaign.

Jacob Silverman
Elon Musk seeks liftoff at a Butler, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump rally.
Elon Musk seeks liftoff at a Butler, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump rally.(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

We’ve never seen the American plutocracy operate quite like this. Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, spent the homestretch of the 2024 presidential campaign providing a degree of public and financial support to a candidate that’s all but unprecedented in the annals of pay-to-play American electioneering. Not since Howard Hughes secretly funneled cash to Hubert Humphrey, Robert F. Kennedy, and Richard Nixon in 1968 has an unstable, flamboyant billionaire industrialist exerted such influence on a presidential race.

According to the latest Federal Election Commission filings, in the last quarter, Musk gave $74,950,000 to America PAC, the pro-Trump organization he cofounded with like-minded tech billionaires. He also gave $289,100 to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Other right-wing billionaires have contributed tens of millions of dollars to Donald Trump–supporting PACs. But Musk was doing more than dipping into his highly leveraged fortune to prop up the Trump campaign and its associated PACs. Although Musk and Trump had shit-talked each other in public and private, the two men mothballed the snippy hostility as they pursued an awkward alliance, gassing each other up at Trump rallies, on social media, and in TV interviews.

Trump has embraced Musk’s cultish, and cultivated, image as a technical visionary and genius businessman with ambitions that reach beyond the stars. The flattery is mutual: Musk, who speaks in the doomer register favored by reactionary venture capitalists and Trump himself, routinely described the Republican nominee as the only person who can save America from civilizational collapse.

True to his word, Musk did all he could to promote Trump’s candidacy on X. Through a series of feature changes, including the site-wide promotion of right-wing accounts—most especially his own—Musk turned X into 4chan lite. The platform became a sewer of bad information, bigotry, and Nazis stumping for Trump. Musk is the goblin king of this dank fiefdom, plucking inane, racist, wholly fictional posts from the rivers of shit and using them to juice his worshipful followers’ political hysteria.

It’s unclear whether the debauched X platform can still wield the immense influence it once held over a mainstream media that has started to tire of Musk. But he still gets clicks, even if he’s now the villain. In his ability to shape the news cycle—or, more accurately, to troll it—Musk is rivaled only by Trump. And Trump, who rarely posts on X, has arguably been eclipsed there by his ketamine-touting backer.

Current Issue

Cover of April 2025 Issue

Musk adopted an all-hands approach to the election. He has relocated much of his business empire to Pennsylvania and assembled a war room of advisers and political consultants to strategize how to win that crucial state. His America PAC emphasized collecting voter data in swing states and employed dissembling tactics that quickly drew investigations. Musk joked about personally canvassing neighborhoods in Pennsylvania. Instead, he did the rich man’s version, unleashing his PACs to hire canvassers on the ground in swing states.

The motive behind Musk’s MAGA makeover was, as he described it, a simple question of self-interest. In the event of Trump’s defeat, he told Tucker Carlson, “I’m fucked.” In an attempt at humor, he wondered how long his prison sentence might be and if he’d be allowed to see his kids. Even if they were mostly unmoored from reality, Musk’s dark, typically unfunny jokes reflected a truth: He saw the stakes as incredibly high. And so should we.

Trump had touted Musk as the future “secretary of cost-cutting”—an informal executive gig that would give the erratic billionaire carte blanche to ax federal programs, close departments, and remake the administrative state according to the persecution fantasies he harbors about “the woke mind virus.” Such a post would grant Musk unprecedented authority to dismantle agencies he doesn’t like—which, in practice, means booting masses of middle-class government workers out of their jobs and slashing regulations that attempt to check corporate power. To consider just one possibility, Musk, Trump, and the GOP could find common cause in ending protections for trans youth and the healthcare programs that serve them. Musk’s ability to disrupt Americans’ lives—not just in the rhetorical sense favored by his fellow Silicon Valley moguls—would be vast.

The outcome of the 2024 election was still unknown as this piece went to press. But it bears stressing that the broader oligarchic logic behind the Musk-Trump alliance won’t be going away anytime soon. The next phase of the MAGA movement is poised to bestow untold new influence on the menagerie of crypto con men, bootlicking fascists, and billionaire ghouls who have long surrounded Trump. Just consider Trump’s heir apparent, JD Vance. Like Musk, he came up through Silicon Valley as a devoted venture capitalist understudy to Peter Thiel. Vance is a chameleon and a sycophant of power—and no one, in this decadent phase of the American imperium, has power like Elon Musk.

Support independent journalism that exposes oligarchs and profiteers


Donald Trump’s cruel and chaotic second term is just getting started. In his first month back in office, Trump and his lackey Elon Musk (or is it the other way around?) have proven that nothing is safe from sacrifice at the altar of unchecked power and riches.

Only robust independent journalism can cut through the noise and offer clear-eyed reporting and analysis based on principle and conscience. That’s what The Nation has done for 160 years and that’s what we’re doing now.

Our independent journalism doesn’t allow injustice to go unnoticed or unchallenged—nor will we abandon hope for a better world. Our writers, editors, and fact-checkers are working relentlessly to keep you informed and empowered when so much of the media fails to do so out of credulity, fear, or fealty.

The Nation has seen unprecedented times before. We draw strength and guidance from our history of principled progressive journalism in times of crisis, and we are committed to continuing this legacy today.

We’re aiming to raise $25,000 during our Spring Fundraising Campaign to ensure that we have the resources to expose the oligarchs and profiteers attempting to loot our republic. Stand for bold independent journalism and donate to support The Nation today.

Onward,

Katrina vanden Heuvel

Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

Jacob Silverman

Jacob Silverman is the author of Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection and the coauthor of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud. He is working on a book about Silicon Valley and the political right.

More from The Nation

President-elect Donald Trump with Elon Musk at a launch of a test flight of the SpaceX rocket in Brownsville, Texas.

Science Fiction Predicted the Rise of the Tech Bro Oligarchy Science Fiction Predicted the Rise of the Tech Bro Oligarchy

The racist tinge to Elon Musk’s hacking of the government eerily reflects cyberpunk's vision of the future—especially the science fiction coming out of South Africa.

Juan Cole

A segregation-era sign that hung over a water fountain in Montgomery, Alabama.

The Trump-Musk Regime Wants to Make Segregation Great Again The Trump-Musk Regime Wants to Make Segregation Great Again

In a boon for racist businesses, the administration has ended a ban on segregated facilities for federal contractors.

Elie Mystal

Illinois Governor Pritzker Speaks At Center For American Progress In Washington, DC

Democratic Donors Packed the House for an “Actual Billionaire” Democratic Donors Packed the House for an “Actual Billionaire”

J.B. Pritzker's appearance at the Center for American Progress met with a resounding reception. But is his elevation to the national stage the way to reach working people?

Chris Lehmann

Protesters hold signs during a national day of action against Trump administration's mass firing of National Park Service employees at Yosemite National Park, California, on March 1, 2025.

Trump’s War on Public Lands Moves to its Second Phase Trump’s War on Public Lands Moves to its Second Phase

The Great Firing continues—and the next round of layoffs will reveal how much power over public lands the Trump administration will cede to corporations.

Lazo Gitchos

Demonstrators from the human rights organization Jewish Voice for Peace are detained by NYPD officers as they hold a civil disobedience action inside Trump Tower in New York on March 13, 2025.

Trump’s Mob-Boss Offer to Us Jews: Accept “Protection”—or Else Trump’s Mob-Boss Offer to Us Jews: Accept “Protection”—or Else

Under the guise of “fighting antisemitism,” Trump is shredding our rights and telling us we are safe.

Dave Zirin

Protest Tesla

Protest Tesla Protest Tesla

Street action at Tesla, Route 22, Springfield, NJ, March 1, 2025.

OppArt / Karen Guancione