‘I love you Elon’: How Musk helped rocket Trump back into the White House

Call it government via the manosphere. The men Donald Trump surrounded himself with on stage for his victory speech had one thing in common – they are all figures of influence in the network of male online communities that has sprung up “as a response to feminism, female empowerment and the alienating forces of neoliberalism”, according to The Conversation.

King of them all was Elon Musk, a hero-figure of the manosphere for good reason. He is the richest man in the world, the genius billionaire innovator who has pushed the boundaries of business-possibility in electric vehicles and in space travel, to name his two biggest commercial ventures.

Elon Musk on the campaign trail for Trump in Pennsylvania.Credit: Getty Images

The derogatory cliché of the manosphere-dwelling man is that he is a computer-obsessed, socially awkward nerd living in his mother’s basement, gifted at gaming but incapable of talking to girls. Musk represents both the embodiment and the transcendence of this stereotype – an oddball science dork who has turned his quirks into superpowers.

In the best tradition of American plutocrats, Musk is so rich and so eccentric that he has out-Alpha’ed the Alpha guys. Once, he was a social outsider. Now, not only is he the most popular guy in the room, he owns the room.

Just look at the crowing he has done since the Trump victory on X, the social media website he owns. As the prospects of Trump’s presidential victory firmed on Tuesday, Musk posted a meme of himself carrying a kitchen sink into the White House, with the caption “let that sink in”.

The post was a reference to video of him carrying a sink into the Twitter headquarters after he purchased the social media business in 2022. He also tweeted to his 203.8 million followers: “You are the media now”.

People applaud SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida in 2020.Credit: AP

Trump delivered his victory speech to an ecstatic crowd early on Wednesday (US time) at the Palm Beach County Convention Centre. It was as rambling as his rally speeches, but unlike those speeches, which were full of mockery and threats of revenge, this one was full of love. He even got mushy about his late mother-in-law Amalija Knavs.

But no one got more love than Musk. Trump spent several minutes singing his praises.

“We have a new star. A star is born: Elon,” Trump said, to huge cheers. “He is an amazing guy.”

Then the president-elect began a long digression about Musk and a rocket.

“You know he sent the rocket up two weeks ago, and I saw that rocket, I saw it coming down, I saw it, it was, when it left, it was beautiful, shiny white, when it came down it didn’t look so pretty, it was going 10,000 miles an hour, it was burning like hell,” he said. “But I saw it come down and turn around … you know, it’s like 22 storeys tall by the way … and it came down and down, and you saw all that fire burning, and I’m saying only Elon can do this. It must be an Elon,” he said.

He said no one could do such a thing except Elon and “that’s why I love you Elon”.

“We have to protect our geniuses,” he said. “We don’t have that many of them.”

As endorsements go, it needed an edit, but it did the trick. Stocks in Tesla – Musk’s EV company – surged, making him $US15 billion richer, CNN reported.

Trump has good reason to be well-disposed to Musk. The billionaire donated $US132 million ($198 million) of his own money to Trump’s campaign and devoted his social media platform – formerly Twitter – to endorsements of Trump, attacks on his opponents, and the promulgation of anti-Democrat conspiracy theories.

Musk, who clearly revels in his newly boosted public profile, spent a few weeks campaigning for Trump in the swing-state of Pennsylvania, and he gave out $US1 million ($1.5 million) cheques to prospective voters as part of a (possibly illegal) get-out-to-vote campaign in battleground states.

The president-elect has foreshadowed Musk taking an important role in the Trump administration as “Secretary of Cost-Cutting”, head of a planned “government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government”. Musk believes $US2 trillion could be cut from the $US6.25 trillion federal budget.

He has a strong personal financial interest in the abolition of regulation and governmental oversight of business. There is a federal review of his SpaceX rocket business, as well as a safety investigation into Tesla’s self-driving cars, following reports of fatal accidents caused by the driverless vehicles.

Musk’s preoccupation with breeding and “good genes” echoes Trump’s own. He is a fan of right-wing pronatalist leaders such as Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni.

He has long warned of population decline and is known to offer donations of his sperm to women and couples in his circle. Musk has had 12 children (one died in infancy) to three women, and is reportedly building a compound in Austin, Texas, to house as many of his children, and their mothers, as possible.

“It should be considered a national emergency to have kids,” he posted on X in June.

After pop star Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris in September, identifying herself as one of the “childless cat ladies” scorned by vice president-elect J.D. Vance, Musk singled her out in a creepy social media post. “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.”

According to The New York Times, a Trump victory could make Musk “the most powerful private citizen in the country”.

Given Trump’s emotional volatility and his fail-safe propensity to fall out with his advisers, Musk’s time in the White House will probably be limited. But until then, we should prepare for total libertarian control, where little is regulated except women’s bodies, and procreation is not so much about individual choice as it is about building capital.

Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and columnist.

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