Elon Musk’s transformation of X, formerly Twitter, into a political machine supporting Donald Trump could see the billionaire rewarded with a place in the president-elect’s new administration.
The SpaceX boss has become Trump’s most vocal fan and one of his biggest financial backers during the US election, which has seen X become an unofficial Republican Party campaign tool.
Musk’s influence has been so stark that, in his speech to supporters on election night in the US after he declared victory, Trump paid a lengthy tribute to Musk, calling him a “star” of the Republican Party and a “wonderful” guy.
Musk has posted relentlessly about his support for Trump to his hundreds of millions of followers in the run-up to the election, claiming the future of civilisation was at stake at the polls.
The Tesla and SpaceX boss has appeared at several Trump rallies, as well as pumping millions of dollars into campaign groups supporting the Republican nominee, and funding controversial sweepstakes in swing states that required people to register to vote and sign a pro-Trump petition in order to be eligible.
Alongside thousands of pro-Trump messages, Musk’s X account, and those of many of his own most ardent fans, have also promoted conspiracy theories and misinformation around the key election issues, as well as the Democratic Party and its candidates, often receiving millions of views.
Such has been the swell and relentlessness of the support from Musk that Trump has suggested the tech boss could be given a role in his new cabinet around cost-cutting or government efficiency – a role Musk had previously called to be created to help reduce government spending.
The approach to Trump from social media, and specifically X, has been in stark contrast to the 2020 election, when his posts were regularly fact-checked or flagged as misinformation before and after the election, before ultimately being banned from Twitter – as it was then – and other sites for what they said were rule breaches around inciting the violence at the US Capitol on January 6.
That ban would remain in place on Twitter until Musk bought the platform two years later.
Musk’s management of X has been highly controversial, ever since he tool control of the platform in late 2022.
As well as changing its name, the Tesla and SpaceX boss dismissed more than half the platform’s staff, dismantled its content moderation team, shut down its trust and safety council, ripped up its verification system and restored accounts to hundreds of users who had previously been banned for breaching site rules, crucially, including the man who is about to return to the White House.
Having previously described himself as a “moderate Democrat”, Musk said in 2022 he was shifting to voting Republican and has since gradually upped his support for Trump while criticising the Biden administration.
It has led to the heavily Musk-backed Republican ticket taking back the White House.
Now, Musk finds himself uniquely positioned as a powerful ally to the next president, able to sway a large online platform with a single post, a type of power Trump knows the value of, having forged his political career through the reach of social media.
