For $US130m, Musk bought himself a spot in Trump’s inner circle. But what exactly has he gained?

“A star is born!” US President-elect Donald Trump told his raucous supporters just a few hours before the US election was called in his favour. “Elon!”

“He’s a character, he’s a special guy, he’s a super genius.”

Months of fuelling a budding bromance, millions of dollars in political donations and millions more memes and tweets all culminated at this moment: a comprehensive Trump victory, and one that bore the mark of the world’s richest tech bro.

Billionaire Elon Musk donated at least $US132 million ($198 million) to Donald Trump and his allies.Credit: AP

For a measly $US132 million ($198 million) or so, Musk bought himself a place inside Trump’s inner circle, ensuring a new “broligarchy” will reign for at least the next four years. And now, the lives of Musk, Trump and anyone else in their orbit will head on an entirely different trajectory to that which came before.

It’s a small price to pay for the world’s richest man to secure a unique opportunity to advance his vision for America. Understanding that vision – one of abundant personal and economic freedoms, technological innovations, and yes, ubiquitous self-driving vehicles – is key to understanding what the next four years could have in store for the United States and the world.

Musk’s involvement in Trump’s campaign is one of the most significant stories of the election. He arguably did more than any single individual to aid the president-elect’s campaign, and he is more responsible for the crushing Republican victory than anyone not named Donald J. Trump.

This photo posted on X soon after the election is a sign of Elon Musk’s closeness to Donald Trump and his extended family. Credit: Twitter

The mega-billionaire first endorsed Trump on July 13, the day the former president’s ear was wounded in an unsuccessful assassination attempt. Musk then ploughed just over $US100 million into re-electing his buddy, and his army of acolytes knocked on millions of doors in crucial battleground states. His America PAC gave away $US1 million a day to registered voters who signed a petition supporting the first and second amendments of the US Constitution.

Those figures are chickenfeed compared to the $US230 billion jump in the value of Tesla since the election. The gain – 29 per cent – took the company’s value above $US1 trillion, and made the world’s richest man even richer.

“My America PAC massively improved the Republican ground game in the swing states,” Musk told right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson in an interview at Mar-a-Lago.

Arguably even more influential than Musk’s ground game was his online game. In 2022, Musk bought Twitter and turned the platform, which is still the world’s most politically influential social media destination, into a haven for right-wing memes and propaganda.

Joe Rogan (right) interviewed Donald Trump for three hours for his podcast.Credit: AP

Trump’s convincing election victory has cemented Musk as one of the most influential figures for not just young white American men but also disillusioned working-class voters everywhere.

Forget Lachlan, or James. The real heir to Rupert Murdoch is perhaps not one of his own family members but Musk and the podcasters, including Joe Rogan, Andrew Huberman and Ben Shapiro. They are now more relevant than any legacy media outlet and have become essentially the new media.

Millions of Americans are no longer reading The New York Times or watching CNN. They’re not plugged into mainstream media and they are often outright proud of the fact. They’re listening to Rogan’s three-hour-long podcasts on the train and during gym sessions, and they’re listening to Huberman’s Huberman Lab podcast, dissecting neuroscience and discussing how to live longer via biohacking.

Rogan, who had Trump on his show in the lead-up and endorsed him the day before the election, posted a video on X of himself watching Trump’s victory speech with the caption “WHOLE. LEE. SHIT”.

WHOLE. LEE. SHIT is one way to put it.

Musk might be a “character” or even a “super genius”, depending on whom you ask, but somewhat perversely, he’s one of the least charismatic people to command an army of millions of ardent followers. He spoke on stage in Adelaide in 2017 at the International Astronautical Congress, promising interplanetary travel between Earth and Mars.

For a “super genius”, his performance was halting, his laptop faltered more than once, and the crowd of thousands of Australians was left largely underawed. Musk was just as awkward at this year’s Republican National Convention and on stage at Trump’s boisterous rallies.

But that lack of in-person charisma doesn’t matter to “Musketeers”, who have latched on to the entrepreneur’s abrasive online presence, and many of whom can perhaps see themselves in his awkwardness.

And just as countless pundits have wrongly written off Trump over the years, many have also written off Musk, who has proven remarkably resilient despite countless controversies and setbacks, legal and otherwise.

The current situation can perhaps be traced back years, to a snub by President Joe Biden.

Musk was not invited to an electric vehicle summit hosted by Biden in 2021, despite Tesla in that year accounting for three-quarters of electric vehicle sales in the US. He complained at the time that it was “odd” he wasn’t invited while executives from companies including Ford and General Motors were warmly welcomed.

That saga has shades of the infamous 2011 White House Correspondents’ dinner, in which Trump was the butt of jokes by president Barack Obama and comedian Seth Meyers. “Donald Trump has been saying he will run for president as a Republican,” Meyers said. “Which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke.”

Trump sat stony-faced throughout the ordeal and successfully ran for president five years later.

That humiliation, and Musk’s snub a decade later, could well have set in train the events before us today.

But whatever the case, Trump and Musk are now each part of a mutually beneficial political alliance that should last for a long time, despite how unpredictable and impulsive Trump and Musk are as individuals.

But what happens next, and how does Musk use his “super genius” skills? And how does Trump exploit them?

Musk can never be US president, given he was born in South Africa. But he is now at the centre of Trump’s political orbit and he is likely to hold a key role in his administration, previously promising to lead a new government efficiency commission and working to slash as much as he can from the $US6.75 trillion federal budget. The figure of $US2 trillion has been bandied about.

Box chief executive Aaron Levie has known Musk for years.Credit: Bloomberg

Musk also vowed on Tuesday night that his super PAC, America PAC, would continue to operate after the election. The US political machine is built around money and will allow Musk, for as long as he is one of the world’s wealthiest individuals, to wield an outsized influence.

Aaron Levie, chief executive of Box, a multibillion-dollar US cloud storage company, has known Musk for years and says the incoming Trump administration will be vastly different to the last due to the number of tech leaders in its orbit.

“I feel more confident in this Trump administration than the first one, due to people like Elon being involved and around the president,” Levie tells me. “I’d be hopeful that his ideas can get lodged in there, and that he can be actively engaged in a number of key areas.

“Elon and others around him tend to believe in free markets, and letting consumers decide, and not using the government to sway the direction, to sway these things.

“The tech industry is lucky to have Elon be a part of whatever this new administration is. It will be a far better outcome than if he wasn’t involved.”

Musk is also likely to hold on to his business interests while pushing the Trump government towards fewer regulations and fewer regulators.

The entrepreneur has been openly critical of a federal review of his SpaceX rocket business, and he is likely to want to tear up red tape slowing the rollout of Tesla’s fully autonomous vehicles, which have been promised for years. Trump has also promised to repeal Biden’s executive order on AI signed in October 2023, which had put safeguards on the nascent technology. Deregulation of AI is crucial for Tesla to get its autonomous vehicles up and running, and would also benefit Musk’s AI start-up, xAI.

Crypto has hit all-time highs over the past week and it is likely to continue to boom with Musk so close to the president. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance is also a crypto believer. He was heavily backed by Silicon Valley powerbrokers such as Peter Thiel and David Sacks.

Trump himself has pledged to be a “crypto president” and is tipped to quickly replace Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler, who has long opposed crypto and who has sued many of its companies, including Coinbase and Kraken. In September Trump launched crypto trader World Liberty Financial, backed by his family’s money, and it has since launched its own cryptocurrency.

The long-term impact of a Trump presidency on Tesla is more uncertain: while Trump’s proposed tariffs might benefit the company by limiting competition from Chinese EV makers, Tesla relies heavily on China as a key production hub. Also, China is the company’s largest market outside the US.

It’s not hyperbolic to say the Musk-Trump partnership will be consequential not just for Earth but also for other planets. Musk consistently says his guiding force is to make humanity an “interplanetary species”, and Trump will soon preside over the first manned lunar landing in more than 50 years. The astronauts will be carried on a SpaceX Starship rocket.

Musk earlier this year declared that Kamala Harris would doom humankind to an earthbound existence, while Trump would put humanity on Mars. The second Trump presidency is likely to bring with it a new era of space travel.

Back on Earth, Musk, along with libertarians close to him such as Sacks and Thiel, will continue to push for the US government to be run like a technology start-up, with Trump at its helm.

Despite their differences, Musk and Trump are more similar than one might assume. Both are constantly aggrieved, seemingly never happy, and are constantly striving to prove themselves right to their millions of acolytes.

Their shared vision for America is a complicated mix of ideas that are in varying degrees forward-looking and retrograde. An America free of the “woke mind virus”; that rewards technological innovation; and yet is threatening mass deportations of its illegal immigrants, of which Musk was once one.

The pair now find their fates intertwined, along with the fate of the world’s most powerful economy and its millions of citizens.

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