Elon Musk has taken a prominent role in President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, sitting in on many job interviews and spending significant time at Mar-a-Lago. Photo / Hiroko Masuike, The New York Times
He’s on the patio. He’s on the golf course. Everywhere Donald Trump looks, there is the world’s richest man.
In nearly every meeting that President-elect Donald Trump holds at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, alongside him is someone who has been elected or nominated to nothing and, only a few months ago, had no meaningful relationship with him.
Elon Musk.
The world’s richest person has ascended to a position of extraordinary, unofficial influence in Trump’s transition process, playing a role that makes him indisputably America’s most powerful private citizen. He has sat in on nearly every job interview with the Trump team and bonded with the Trump family, and he is trying to install his Silicon Valley friends in plum positions in the next administration.
Trump announced Tuesday that Musk would help lead what he called the Department of Government Efficiency, a new body to “dismantle government bureaucracy”. But Musk’s true influence on the Trump transition effort goes well beyond that posting.
He has assumed an almost mythical aura in Trump’s inner circle. At Mar-a-Lago one recent evening, he walked into the dining room about 30 minutes after the President-elect did and received a similar standing ovation, according to two people who saw him enter.
Musk, often with his 4-year-old son X on his lap, has spent most of the last week at Mar-a-Lago, joining not just interviews but almost every meeting and many meals that Trump has had. He briefly shuttled back to Austin, Texas, where he has a US$35 million compound, before returning Friday, where he ate in Mar-a-Lago’s dining room and on its patio, roamed the gift shop and spent time on the golf course – all alongside the President-elect.
“I’m happy to be the first buddy!” he replied to a social media follower this weekend.
This article is based on roughly a dozen interviews with Republican donors, politicians and friends of Musk, many of whom insisted on anonymity to talk about private conversations.
Publicly, over just the first week of the transition, Musk has endorsed Senator Rick Scott of Florida to be the next Senate majority leader; urged Republican senators to embrace recess appointments for Trump; suggested that all government employees should submit a “weekly email of accomplishments”; called for the Department of Education to be closed; solicited recommendations for new administration roles that he could bring to Trump; wondered if Canada was “dying”; and posted plenty of Trump-themed memes.
Behind the scenes, Musk’s behaviour has been far more hands-on than even some of his allies expected. His role, in the eyes of some Trump aides, even outstrips that of Howard Lutnick and Linda E. McMahon, the two formally appointed leaders of the Trump transition.
He has sat in on calls with foreign leaders, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and plans to meet in person this week with President Javier Milei of Argentina when Milei visits Mar-a-Lago. Musk has also attended at least one national security meeting with Trump alongside the likes of Stephen Miller, a top aide, and Donald Trump Jr., according to a person briefed on the meeting.
On Wednesday, Musk is expected to accompany Trump to a meeting with House Republicans on Capitol Hill, according to a person close to the President-elect. Musk is flying aboard Trump’s plane to Washington, the person said.
Musk is generally not introducing new names for specific roles, according to people familiar with the process, typically evaluating only people whom the Trump transition team is already considering.
He has voiced support for Trump’s decision not to appoint Mike Pompeo or Nikki Haley to a senior national security position, although he unsuccessfully expressed concern about giving Representative Elise Stefanik of New York a role that would take her out of Congress. (She has been offered the post of United Nations ambassador.)
Musk also has a good relationship with Brendan Carr, the commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, who is seen as a front-runner to be the body’s next chair. The billionaire has recently voiced support for Carr in private conversations at Mar-a-Lago.
Karoline Leavitt, a Trump spokesperson, told The New York Times that Musk and Trump were “great friends and brilliant leaders working together to Make America Great Again”.
On a personal level, Trump seems to be taken with Musk, adopting him as a quasi member of the family. A photograph posted on social media by Tiffany Trump, Trump’s youngest daughter, featured the entire family, including grandchildren, at Mar-a-Lago with the message “Dad, we are so proud of you!”
Conspicuously, Musk was standing right in the mix, holding his son X.
“Elon, get in the picture with your boy,” Trump told him, according to a video of the moment posted online. “We have to get Elon with his boy – his gorgeous, perfect boy.”
On Sunday, Trump’s eldest grandchild, Kai Trump, put it a little more bluntly with a photo from the golf course: “Elon achieving uncle status.”
Musk is not at Mar-a-Lago with a large entourage – just his son X, a nanny and some security. But his elevation has meant more influence on the fledgling Republican administration from a coterie of Silicon Valley figures who are close to the billionaire.
Trump has cultivated right-wing members of the tech world over the last year as he has adopted tech-friendly positions on cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence and Big Tech antitrust legislation. But at the same time, his Vice-President-elect, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, has been a supporter of Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission and a target of some conservatives, including Musk.
Musk has said that he is recruiting an “A team” from the private sector to help overhaul the Government and that he will ensure “that maniacally dedicated small-government revolutionaries join this administration”. It is unclear how these other tech executives and Musk himself, whose rocket company SpaceX has federal contracts, will avoid conflicts of interest as they work with the administration.
Musk has recommended two fellow executives at SpaceX, General Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy and Tim Hughes, for administration roles, the Times has reported.
He has also been floating other friends and associates for gigs – or at least paved the way for them to have some influence.
Joe Lonsdale, a tech investor close to Musk, is not planning to play a formal role in the Trump transition, according to a person briefed on the matter, and he has said publicly that he does not want to join the administration “full time” but would rather play a part-time advisory role.
Another friend of Musk’s, Ken Howery, served as ambassador to Sweden during the first Trump administration and has told others that he is interested in another diplomatic position. Another person who could have some influence is Marc Andreessen, a prominent tech investor who, like Musk and Howery, spent election night at Mar-a-Lago.
Musk has also encouraged Palmer Luckey, a co-founder of the military technology startup Anduril, to aid the administration in some way, saying on the social platform X that it was “very important” for “entrepreneurial companies like yours” to be involved. Luckey said in a television interview that he had spoken with the Trump transition team about how he could help.
The friend of Musk’s who currently appears to have the most direct influence is David Sacks, a former colleague dating to their years at PayPal.
Sacks, who hosted a fundraiser for Trump in San Francisco in June, has developed a direct line of communication by phone with the President-elect. Sacks, who took a photo with Musk and Trump on election night and spent much of the evening in the candidate’s vicinity, has publicly pushed for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be given a position in the administration.
Sacks, a venture capitalist, has told friends since election day that because he leads an active fund, it would not be practical for him to play a more formal role in the administration. But he, like Musk, helped tank the idea of neoconservatives like Pompeo winning administration roles.
Musk is in some ways reprising – and expanding upon – the role that another tech billionaire, Peter Thiel, formally played on Trump’s transition team in 2016. Thiel has since had something of a falling out with Trump, but he has been passing along potential names to the leaders of the transition effort.
Other figures with ties to Thiel are also in the mix.
Blake Masters, the former Arizona Senate candidate and Thiel’s longtime top aide, has spoken with transition officials about a possible role and made recommendations of other appointees, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Another longtime Thiel aide, Jim O’Neill, has told friends that he is interested in a health-related position, two people said.
Yet another former top Thiel aide, Michael Kratsios, served as chief technology officer in the first Trump administration and was recently tapped to help oversee the tech policy portfolio of the transition effort. He is also interested in joining the administration, according to a person who has spoken to him.
Thiel, for his part, should be riding high after the rise of Vance, his onetime protege. But despite their relationship, the mood at his election-night party last week in Los Angeles was relatively subdued, according to people who were there, though it began on West Coast time and unfolded with the outcome of the night mostly clear.
Thiel, like Musk, is a fan of gimmicks and lavish parties, and he paid homage to the concluding campaign. Bartenders were dressed in Trump wigs, and the food harked back to one of Trump’s campaign photo-ops: McDonald’s.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Theodore Schleifer
Photographs by: Hiroko Masuike
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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