Congratulations to Elon Musk, a genius of truly galactic proportions, who recently made what might have been the world’s savviest investment. The tech billionaire spent more than $277m backing Donald Trump, along with a number of other Republican candidates in the election – and that quarter-billion-dollar investment has paid off nicely. Musk’s net worth has increased by 77% since Trump’s victory, and has now surpassed $400bn (£315bn), according to a recent estimate from Bloomberg, making him the first person ever to officially reach such a milestone. Still, in just a couple of years, Musk’s current fortune might look like chump change: the man is reportedly on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2027.
How did he get (even more) rich so quick? Well, if you want to be diplomatic about it, as CNN was, you can say something like “an alliance with president-elect Donald Trump has pushed his ventures to the forefront”. But the more direct answer is that everyone knows the incoming Trump administration’s guiding principle is quid pro quo. Since it seems highly likely that taxpayer money will be funnelled towards Musk’s various companies, the value of those companies has been blowing up. Kind of like his SpaceX rockets – one of which exploded so ferociously earlier this year that it tore a hole in the ionosphere. Is that a bad thing? Iono.
Even though Musk has been disgustingly rich for a long time, it’s worth pausing and reflecting on how obscene it is that a single man is now worth around $440bn when 733 million people (one in 11 people globally) faced hunger in 2023. I don’t need any lectures on liquidity, thank you: I know that Musk doesn’t have his billions in a Scrooge McDuck-style swimming pool, and his fortune is largely unrealised gains. But, in a world where inequality has rocketed, it’s still an unconscionable amount of money. Particularly as Musk seems intent on spending so much of his money on getting to Mars rather than improving life on Earth.
You may remember that a few years ago he loftily promised to sell $6bn of Tesla stock and donate it to the World Food Programme (WFP) to help save 42 million people “on the brink of starvation” if the WFP shared a plan on how the money would be spent. The WFP dutifully published a plan several days later; Musk ignored it. He did, however, donate a few billion to his own foundation.
Of course, Musk doesn’t give a flying Cybertruck what the likes of me think about him. Despite all his broken promises, his reputation has been pretty bulletproof through the years. He has got an army of fanboys who see him as a super-successful visionary whose mountains of money are completely justified because 1) he’s “earned” it and 2) he’s gonna use his fortune to change the world. Like Trump, Musk has also been able to position himself as an anti-establishment figure fighting against the powers that be.
But Musk’s whole anti-establishment shtick might be harder to pull off now that he has wiggled his way into the heart of power. His billions might be looked at slightly differently now that he is telling Americans to brace for “temporary hardship” because of all the spending cuts that the Trump administration is going to implement. Particularly as Musk doesn’t have the charisma that Trump has: the incoming president is a showman, while Musk is an awkward clown.
There have already been some interesting rumblings of anti-Musk discontent from groups who might normally worship him. Earlier this month Bryce Mitchell, a mixed martial arts fighter, went on a rant in which he called Musk a “rat bastard” who only cared about himself and spent his money on rockets rather than helping people. “Time will always reveal someone’s true character; and if you put that man in a position of power, his true character will be revealed,” Mitchell proclaimed. Now, Mitchell has some odd views – he once said that “gravity ain’t real” – but it feels like he’s right on this.
Musk could get away with a lot when he could position himself as some kind of renegade building rockets. Once he’s making decisions that affect people’s daily budgets, however, the public might start to get tired of his shenanigans. And Trump himself, it should be noted, has displayed signs of getting sick of Musk. The space man should be careful he doesn’t let his newfound status go to his head. All that power can make you a little dizzy.
