Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX recently made history by catching a Starship rocket booster as it careened back to Earth, wants you to vote for Donald Trump for many reasons. That includes not just what Trump will do here on this planet, but also for what he’ll achieve that’s outside this world. “Vote for @real DonaldTrump,” Musk recently tweeted, “if you want humanity to be a spacefaring civilization”.
Back inside the Earth’s orbit, the CEO of Tesla and X, and one of the richest men in the world, makes an odd foil for Democrats. In a parallel universe, his work in commercial space flights, inventing the most advanced electric cars on the planet, advocacy for sustainable energy, and long record of voting “100 percent Dem until a few years ago” would seem make him a hero of the left. Instead, Musk has taken on the role of comic book supervillain whose full-throated support for Trump has turned him into a pariah among progressives.
Musk purports to be baffled by the backlash, since he insists that nothing that he represents is particularly controversial. He considers himself a political “moderate” who, in backing Trump, is simply standing up for common-sense, middle-of-the-road positions: belief in free speech, deference to the US Constitution, and the right of countries to control their borders. “I’ve been told at times that they are like right-wing values,” Musk said. “These are the fundamental values that made America what it is today.”
