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Elon Musk actually jumped twice when he appeared on stage with Donald Trump on Saturday.
Maybe you’ve seen the photo: Earth’s richest human, his jacket flapping up around his arms and his belly flesh bared, briefly achieving enough delta-V to hang in the air a few feet above the planet’s surface for one perfect moment. Trump looks nonplussed.
All too soon, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO came back to Earth. But in response, according to The New York Times, the crowd went wild – and so Musk did it again.
That detail, I think, is the key to understanding what brought Musk to this remarkable moment. Just a few years ago, he carefully refused to pigeonhole himself politically and often harshly criticized Trump. Now he is a major financial backer of Trump — he gave $1 million to a Republican PAC last month — and publicly hitched his image to a man frequently ranked as among America’s worst ever presidents.
So… why?
Obviously only Musk himself knows for sure. But I’ve been reporting on his politics for a long time, and I think we can get pretty close without needing to implant a brain chip in his skull.
First, Musk is one of a small but influential group of Silicon Valley elites, particularly those making physical products such as cars or drones, who feel slighted and over-regulated by the US government. They see Trump as their best hope for a future where they can build and conquer new markets without impediment.
"Their perspective is that the government is f***ing up regulation, so at all costs we need to get a seat at the table," says Prescott Watson, a venture capitalist with RedBlue Capital who specializes in energy, transport, and other ‘hardware’ industries. "And so they’re willing to make a very significant compromise and moral compromise in order to get that seat at the table.”
He notes that Musk "sees how the government is creating so many self-imposed limitations on growth and productivity in the United States, and it pisses him off."
Watson disagrees profoundly with this Faustian bargain, and says he is "hoping, praying, donating, to anyone who can defeat Trump". But he also thinks there is truth to the idea that certain promising industries — such as consumer drones, which he says are trapped in limbo by slow-moving US aviation authorities — are being held back by government dysfunction.
To Musk, who reportedly has a messianic sense of his own role in the long-term survival of humanity, the Democrats are promising merely a continuation of this untenable logjam, whereas Trump might at least be persuaded to take a wrecking ball to it.
It also helps, naturally, that any business person who cozies up to Trump is in line for a bonanza if he wins. The man is a shameless crony capitalist who likes to reward those loyal to him, and has already offered Musk a government job. Nor has Musk ever been shy about making money from big government – from the carbon credits that ensured Tesla’s survival through some very turbulent years to the government contracts that fuel SpaceX.
Yet if commercial advantage was Musk’s main goal here, might it not be smarter to hedge one’s bets? "I don’t think he’s doing this in a Machiavellian way. I think he actually just believes it," says Watson. I agree: I think Musk is in earnest when he claims that "civilization is on the line" in this election.
I suspect there’s something deeper going on, rooted in Musk’s seemingly ravenous hunger for approval.
Not too long ago, the quarrelsome rocket magnate enjoyed widespread acclaim, even adoration. On top of various aerospace awards and honors, he had a cameo role in 2010’s Iron Man 2, guest starred in a laudatory 2015 episode of The Simpsons, and made appearances in numerous other films and shows from The Big Bang Theory to Men in Black: International.
These works generally depicted him as an idealistic and iconoclastic genius; a little rough around the edges, perhaps, but dedicated to improving the world. The praise was bipartisan too, with many liberals seeing him as a daring underdog trying to stop climate change by taking on the fossil-fuelled traditional auto industry.
But Musk’s glossy sheen began to crack. Journalists who covered Tesla’s controversies did not take kindly to being regularly harassed by his cult-like fanbase, which he did little to restrain. Nor did his baseless smearing of a British cave diver as a "pedo", in and out of court, or his repeated false statements about his companies, endear him to investors or the press.
Musk never seemed to react well to this, and it got worse during lockdown as he became more and more blatantly addicted to Twitter. His tweets often felt try-hard, eager to please, thirsty for likes. Quite evidently, the richest person on Earth was pickling his brain in an endless popularity contest that bombards its users with levels of stimulation and reward chemicals that human beings never evolved to endure. Say what you like about Jeff Bezos: at least he’s never felt the need to cavort in public for the attention and approval of strangers.
Long ago, when I was a student journalist in London, one of my mentors made an observation that has always stuck with me. I was interning at an investigative non-profit that researched the funding of climate denialism. One day my boss remarked that many leading climate deniers were middling figures in their fields – until they were swept up by the denial movement.
In this small world, obscure academics could suddenly become pseudoscientific superstars, awash in speaking opportunities and people who treated them as brave truth-tellers. It’s a grooming machine, he told me: it picks up people who have holes in their hearts and flatters them until their identity depends on it.
To be clear, Elon Musk was very far from obscure before his embrace of Trump. And there are no doubt deeper political and personal feelings – including his estrangement from his transgender daughter – underlying the specific turn he has taken. But I can’t help seeing a similar dynamic at work.
The extremely online right is extremely good at love-bombing, and Musk’s new politics have won him lavish praise from conservative politicians and social media users. Donald Trump’s base is already a cult of personality. It must feel invigorating, intoxicating, to receive such ardent acclaim.
I asked a psychotherapist who often works with tech leaders what they thought of this theory. "What you’re saying is extremely accurate, in my opinion," they said. While Trump and Musk have some "profound" differences, the therapist added, both men appear to share an intense need for recognition and validation.
"When that need is coming from a bottomless pit, it’s never, ever enough. And I think they each have a bottomless pit," said this person, who asked to be anonymous for fear of backlash from Trump or Musk’s fans. "The adulation, the dedication, that people give to Trump – I wouldn’t be surprised if Musk, on some level, feels he’s entitled to that, by virtue of having earned it. And so it’s time he got some."
The therapist added that they believe Musk is more the user than the used in this relationship; that Musk is coming from "a more calculated place".
I’m not so sure. Donald Trump has little to lose, and much to gain, from his romance with a man whose estimated net worth is two orders of magnitude higher than his own. For Musk, the potential downside seems much higher. But at least he looks happy.
