Speaking at a forum in Qatar during President Trump’s recent grand tour of the Middle East, Elon Musk teased plans to stop funding campaigns. “I think I’ve done enough,” he said. “If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I don’t currently see a reason.”
Combine this proclamation with his recent acknowledgment that he’ll be shifting more of his time away from Washington and back to his companies—especially Tesla, which is struggling in the face of slipping sales and widespread disdain—and to some it seems Musk is moving on from his role as one of the main (and most polarizing) characters in our current political drama.
It might be pressure from shareholders, or it might be the shock of what happened last month in Wisconsin. Musk invested millions of dollars in the hope of electing a conservative to the state’s Supreme Court—and put his personal brand on the line in public appearances. His candidate lost badly, and he may have come to the realization that voters don’t really like him.
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But don’t think Musk is done exercising his considerable influence over our government and the people who work in it. He will be a dangerous force in our politics for the foreseeable future. He can’t help himself.
Does anyone really think he’ll sit on the sidelines in the next election, when his billions could ensure another friendly executive branch? He, his people, and his interests have burrowed deeply into the government, and he has too much at stake to let that clout wither away or be uprooted.
For starters, the DOGE goons Musk installed across federal agencies from the Social Security Administration to the Department of Homeland Security is still chipping away at, well, everything. These minions share his combination of ignorance and arrogance when it comes to the way government works; he may not personally be wielding the chainsaw, but his team will keep firing it up to power down key services and benefits people rely on (more evidence that children should not be given unsupervised access to dangerous power tools).
One of Musk’s primary goals in joining Trump’s government was clearly to make sure the many different investigations into him and his companies would be shut down, and on that he has been very successful. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee identified twelve different agencies and offices conducting probes into Musk’s companies, from the National Labor Relations Board to the Department of Interior. In each case, key personnel involved in the investigations were fired or saw their agency crippled.
The Federal Trade Commission, meanwhile, just launched an assault on the progressive non-profit Media Matters for America, a research and advocacy group that has too been critical of Musk. He has already attempted to sue them into oblivion, and now he has the federal government joining in the effort.
An investigation by ProPublica revealed that the administration has pressured officials in Gambia to grant Musk’s Starlink the regulatory approvals it needs to sell its service in the country. And a much larger pay-off involves the billions of dollars Congress appropriated in the infrastructure bill Joe Biden signed to extend fiber broadband to every rural corner of America. Trump officials want to change the rules to put the inferior and more expensive Starlink service on par with fiber.
Musk needs to stay involved with the administration to make sure these lucrative government contracts keep flowing. Trump just announced his intention to build a “Golden Dome” missile defense system over the whole country, for example, at a cost that would no doubt be in the hundreds of billions. Guess who wants to bid on the contract? And if Musk is ever to realize his dream of bringing humans to Mars (aboard SpaceX craft, of course), the government and its funds will have to be involved.
Besides keeping an eye on his financial interests, Musk will probably still turn up regularly to whisper in Trump’s ear and spread his odious views. His love of the spotlight is too powerful to keep him away for long. He was there in the Oval Office looking on approvingly as Trump sandbagged South African president Cyril Ramaphosa and lied about a fictitious “white genocide.” Anyone exposed to Musk’s rancid X feed knows what a fan he is of the kind of naked white supremacy Trump was espousing; if he didn’t feed Trump the talking points the president spat at Ramaphosa, he surely helped shape Trump’s views.
So then, Muskism as a governing philosophy—the assumption that just about everything government does is bad and should be undermined—is still in force. Republicans have adopted it as a kind of berserker version of their traditional “small government” conservatism.
And while Musk may be spending more time outside Washington, his fingers will still be in the pie the federal government is cooking up for a long time to come. He’ll be taking a large slice of it too. And we’ll all be the worse for it.
