Where do Elon Musk’s business interests end and Donald Trump’s political interests begin? Trick question—they’re one and the same.
How else do you explain the jarring sight of the President of the United States hawking Teslas on the White House South Lawn? Trump has always been a salesman, lending his name to real estate, casinos, restaurants, steaks, vitamins, a fragrance for men, watches, water, a bicycle race, office chairs, sneakers, vodka, coins, another fragrance, NFTs. You could, at this very moment, buy a Trump pickleball paddle from the Trump Store online, or a Trump sea mist & sage candle.
But Trump is most famously a pitchman for himself. (And Pizza Hut, if the price is right.) To spend this much political capital on Musk? The world’s richest man? Over a few protests at Tesla dealerships and a tanking stock price? Come on.
Trump is no altruist. Musk did, though, spend nearly $300 million on the 2024 US election cycle, with the vast majority of that directly in support of Trump’s presidential campaign. His transformation of Twitter into X has created an online MAGAtopia barely rivaled by Trump’s own Truth Social platform. And his work with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has let Trump outsource the tedious mechanics of actual governance.
Trump reading off a literal list of Tesla retail prices is the purest distillation yet of a dynamic that won’t end well. It’s already going quite badly, for them and for us: The stock market is tanking, Musk is nearing rock bottom in opinion polls. GOP representatives are canceling town hall meetings rather than face the wrath of constituents over DOGE. Trump’s own cabinet officials are apparently just as fed up with Musk’s level of influence.
Meanwhile, that influence continues to grow. When engineers from SpaceX invaded the Federal Aviation Administration, they reportedly were quick to suggest their own Starlink technology as the solution to the agency’s technical problems. On Thursday, a month after Musk inexplicably met with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in Washington, DC—with three of Musk’s children in tow—Starlink inked deals this week with two major wireless carriers there, creating a glide path for operating in the country.
Even Congress, supposedly a coequal branch of government, is beholden to Musk’s tempers and tweets. At a talk at Georgetown University’s Psaros Center on Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson named Trump and Musk as the two people he prioritizes.
“Elon has the largest platform in the world, literally,” Johnson said. “If he goes on and says something that’s misunderstood or misinterpreted about something we’re doing, he can blow the whole thing up.”
What started as a self-serving bromance has become more volatile, and it goes deeper than DOGE. Trump told a reporter during his infomercial on Tuesday that he would label anyone who committed violence against Tesla dealerships a “domestic terrorist.” On Wednesday, members of the House DOGE subcommittee sent a letter to Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel and US attorney general Pam Bondi to probe the “wave of organized attacks” in recent weeks against Musk and Tesla.
