President-elect Donald Trump has no shortage of well-known supporters. His election night party in Florida included hockey great Wayne Gretzky, UFC President Dana White and, of course, Elon Musk.
Musk spent a great deal of his time and money helping Trump win another term this fall. And with a second Trump presidency on the way, there’s been conjecture about what role, if any, Texas’ wealthiest man might play in the administration.
Maria Curi, who covers tech for Axios, said Musk’s political action committee spent $118 million to help Trump win the election.
“One thing is for sure, he is going to have some influence. I think the question now is what exactly is that going to look like?” she said. “If you ask me, I don’t see Elon Musk kind of stepping away from his other companies — Tesla, X — to go through a Senate confirmation process and then have to adhere to the ethics rules that that requires, including divesting from some of these companies. So if you had to ask me, I see him having a more informal role that is not a formal Cabinet position that requires Senate confirmation.”
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Regardless of his exact role, Curi said Musk is likely to benefit from less regulation and oversight during a second Trump presidency.
“That is certainly something that he is going to push for. He’s very into this idea of government efficiency and making sure that any overly burdensome regulations are not being implemented,” Curi said. “And so one space that we’re looking at specifically is air space, because we know that Donald Trump has not talked a lot about it himself. But Elon Musk is a known backer of systems that put free speech before anything else, before any type of harmful content.
“And unlike the Biden administration, that has put in a lot of resources and has started to put a lot of staff up and money into these agencies to enforce regulations, I suspect we’re going to see that pretty paused significantly and rolled back.”
There has also been a lot of chatter out there about what this could mean for SpaceX in particular. Musk’s aeronautics company has gotten pushback from the Federal Aviation Administration and from the Environmental Protection Agency and others about the environmental impact of its launch facility in South Texas – which could mean those agencies receive scrutiny, Curi said.
Trump is already starting to name members of his administration, so Curi said if Musk does get an advisory role we may know about it soon.
“We just saw that Donald Trump picked his chief of staff. And so they are moving very quickly to start filling out these important personnel roles,” she said. “If Elon Musk is not going to be a Cabinet appointed official, then that means they can start giving him an official role before Trump formally takes office, because, of course, the Senate right now is still under Democratic control and the lame duck for the next couple of months. And so he won’t be in any Cabinet position that’s going to be confirmed in the next couple of months.”
