Musk in the Trump government, the crazy political gamble of the richest man in the world

Photo: Anegla Weiss Agence France-Presse Elon Musk, during the political rally organized by Donald Trump's campaign, on October 27, at Madison Square Garden in New York

Aurélia End – Agence France-Presse in San Francisco

Posted at 8:00

• United States

It was one of the craziest gambles in recent economic and political history, and it paid off: Elon Musk, the megalomaniac entrepreneur and megalomaniac, is being rewarded for his staunch support for Donald Trump with a job as head of a future “Department of Government Efficiency.”

The president-elect has announced that he plans to appoint the head of Tesla, Space X, and X, along with Republican businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, to this brand new “department.” Its mission: to “send shockwaves through the system” by deregulating at every turn and making drastic cuts to the federal budget.

A “ranking of the most horribly stupid expenses” will be published, which “will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining,” Mr. Musk announced on X after his upcoming nomination was announced.

How two notoriously self-centered figures like Elon Musk and Donald Trump will get along in the long run remains to be seen.

Born June 28, 1971 in South Africa to an engineer father and a Canadian model, the world’s richest man—a naturalized American—has become the most controversial figure of neo-capitalism.

He shares his extra-planetary ambitions and his techno-libertarian ideas with more than 200 million subscribers on the platform he bought in 2022, changing its name from “Twitter” to “X.”

Elon Musk, 53, has thrown himself headlong into Donald Trump’s campaign in recent weeks. Images of the multi-billionaire — Forbes estimates his fortune at more than $300 billion — leaping on stage during a Republican rally in Pennsylvania have gone around the world.

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His support committee ran a daily lottery offering $1 million to registered voters in key states who signed a conservative petition in support of free speech and the right to bear arms.

He invested more than $100 million in the president-elect’s campaign, and used his social media, where he posts nonstop, as a sounding board.

So now he’s the head of a “department,” in addition to being the head of Tesla, the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer, and SpaceX, his space company.

Elon Musk has a variety of other projects that illustrate his techno-futuristic vision of a science-enhanced humanity that will thrive on other planets. Among these projects: Neuralink, a young shoot which aims to directly connect the human brain to the computer.

Megalomaniac, workaholic, the serial entrepreneur has always cultivated an image of a rebellious boss, fond of provocations, anti-politically correct.

A millionaire before the age of 30, after selling an online software publisher that he had set up with his brother, Elon Musk subsequently founded X.com, which was merged with PayPal, then bought by eBay in 2002.

“Super genius”

His libertarian line, openly masculinist, and his virulent criticisms of immigration have made him increasingly popular on the American right. To the point of seducing Donald Trump, who called him a “super genius” in his victory speech.

Elon Musk also has a taste for conspiracy theories: for example, this year he claimed that the Democratic Party was “deliberately importing illegal immigrants” to increase its electoral base.

In July, he announced with great fanfare that he would be moving the headquarters of SpaceX and X to Texas, in protest at the passage of a law on transgender students in California, a state that Republicans constantly criticize for its progressive policies.

He had already moved Tesla's headquarters there in 2021.

On X, Elon Musk gave his advice on ending the war in Ukraine, caused controversy by suggesting that we “have a baby” with superstar Taylor Swift after she took a stand against Donald Trump, and described as “interesting” a theory according to which only “dominant males” should make political decisions.

In May 2021, he revealed that he has Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. More recently, he said he takes ketamine, a powerful anesthetic sometimes diverted for stimulant or euphoric purposes, to treat a tendency towards depression.

Divorced three times, Elon Musk is the father of ten children, one of whom died at 10 weeks. One of them, a transgender daughter, filed an official request to change her last name at the same time as her gender in order to cut all ties with her father.