$23 billion in a day: Elon Musk’s bet on Trump has paid off spectacularly

As it became clear that Donald Trump was surging to a huge victory over Kamala Harris, Elon Musk took an online victory lap. “Dark MAGA assemble,” he tweeted while attending Trump’s victory party in Florida, later adding: “The future is going to be fantastic.”

Pictures from Mar-a-Lago showed Musk deep in conversation with Trump, suggesting a tight bond between the two. Trump repeatedly praised the Tesla billionaire during his victory speech, calling him a “special guy” and a “super-genius”.

Elon Musk was one of Donald Trump’s most high-profile backers.Credit: nna\sswain

The callout was the reward for Musk donating huge sums to the Republican’s campaign, for planting himself in Pennsylvania to run a get-out-the-vote operation, and for ceaselessly promoting Trump to his 203 million followers on the social network now known as X.

He also helped to secure the endorsement of podcasting star Joe Rogan, who said he had been influenced by “the great and powerful Elon Musk”.

Musk spent more than $US130 million ($197.3 million) to support Trump and other Republicans, although it is already an investment that has repaid itself several times over. Tesla’s shares added 14.8 per cent on Wall Street, adding more than $US15 billion ($22.8 billion) to Musk’s $US264 billion fortune.

Already the world’s richest person, Trump’s victory now raises the prospect of Musk having substantial influence in the White House. Having been born in South Africa, this is about as close as he can get to the presidency.

He has mulled plans for a “Department of Government Efficiency” and said US government spending should be slashed by trillions. On Wednesday morning, Musk tweeted a meme of himself standing in the Oval Office holding a sink – a reference to his tweet the first day after he bought Twitter, an event that was followed by him cutting around 80 per cent of the company’s staff.

Muskonomics may clash with Trump’s own agenda, which cares little for fiscal discipline. The Tesla tycoon has told voters to be prepared for “temporary hardship”, not a message that Trump wished to promote to an inflation-weary electorate.

The two have also expressed different views on electric vehicles. While Musk has been a pioneer in battery-powered cars, Trump has been sceptical, saying: “I will never tell you what kind of car you have to drive.” He also suggested phasing out tax credits supporting EVs.

Counterintuitively, this could end up benefiting Musk. The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act dangled huge subsidies for US electric car manufacturing, which mainly served to help rivals such as Ford and GM in their efforts to catch Tesla.

Musk sees EVs as inevitable. These days, he is more focused on his plans for swarms of autonomous “robotaxis”, a venture that has been potentially threatened by multiple government agency investigations into Tesla’s self-driving technology – launched while Joe Biden has been in the White House.

“We’ve got a gigantic bureaucracy, we’ve got over-regulation. We need to let the builders of America build,” Musk told the pro-Trump broadcaster Tucker Carlson earlier this week. Here, he surely has a point: SpaceX, a company that has single-handedly resurrected American space launches, needs multiple licences from fish protection agencies to launch.

The biggest prize is likely to be space. Musk frequently communicates that his guiding force is making humanity an “interplanetary species”. Trump, who set up the Artemis Moon mission during his first term, is now due to preside over the first manned lunar landing in more than 50 years, with astronauts carried on a SpaceX Starship rocket. He has pledged that the US will “reach Mars” by the end of his second term.

Musk’s marriage to Trump feels like one of convenience rather than conviction. Musk was a huge Obama fan and claims to have voted for both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden before helping launch Ron De Santis’s campaign and claiming Trump was too old to be president. Trump responded by attacking Musk’s “electric cars that don’t drive long enough” and “rocket ships to nowhere”.

That all appears to have been forgotten. The world’s richest man is now set to be one of the most influential figures in Trump’s White House. “Soon, you will be free to build,” he tweeted on Wednesday. That freedom will also apply to Musk himself.

Telegraph, London

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