As the world’s richest person, Elon Musk has a fleet of private jets to whisk him to wherever he likes whenever he wants.
But it appears he’s just like the rest of us when it comes to wanting to stay cosily close to that special person in his life.
It was revealed this week that, since Donald Trump won the presidential election in November, the billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) has been staying at a $2,000-a-night cottage in the grounds of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and main residence in Florida.
The man who has christened himself ‘First Buddy’ has been seen there with various combinations of his 12 children and their three mothers in recent weeks.
And as Banyan Cottage is only a few hundred feet away from the main mansion, it offers Musk easy access to the president-elect so he has been able to drop in on Trump meetings and dinners, such as one The Donald recently hosted for Amazon multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos.
Among Mar-a-Lago staff, the workaholic Musk has acquired a reputation as a demanding guest, who is forever ordering meals outside of kitchen hours.
But it’s not clear whether the man valued this week at £356billion has been asked to pay for his new Palm Beach base. Indeed, this might be one hotel bill that even the notoriously penny-pinching Trump may not feel like charging.
For Musk, who contributed a reported £223million to Trump’s election campaign and, perhaps more usefully, controls in X the most important communication platform in US politics, has burrowed his way so deep into the Trump inner circle that he’s been antagonising some of its most senior members.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump put on a chummy display in October during the presidential campaign
Not only did he spend Thanksgiving with the Trump family but is now so confident of his influence with the man who will return to the White House later this month that he feels he can weigh in publicly with his views on his cabinet appointees.
Musk himself, says Trump, will co-head a new Department of Government Efficiency – whose acronym, Doge, is an adolescent nod to Musk’s favourite cryptocurrency Dogecoin – that will be responsible for cutting spending, wastage and red tape.
The pair can’t seem to get enough of each other. This was vividly illustrated by a Trump post last Friday on Truth Social, his social media site, that seemed intended as a private communication to his new bosom pal.
‘Where are you? When are you coming to the ‘Centre of the Universe’ Mar-a-Lago,’ wrote Trump. ‘Bill Gates asked to come, tonight. We miss you and x! [an apparent reference to Musk’s four-year-old son X Æ A-Xii] New Year’s Eve is going to be AMAZING!!! DJT.’
It all adds up to a remarkable turnaround in the relationship between the two men given that, in 2022, Musk told Trump to ‘hang up his hat and sail into the sunset’.
But since then, rising share prices following Trump’s victory have added billions to Musk’s net worth and experts say his businesses stand to profit enormously – both financially and in terms of regulation – from an administration in which he’ll be a key figure.
And this will give him even more political clout. Having the ear of the famously malleable president-elect means that Musk has a level of influence and power which he couldn’t have dreamed of a few years ago when he still talked about himself as a ‘moderate… sort of half-Republican, half-Democrat’.
Insiders say he became more Right-wing, and more politically engaged in general, during the pandemic when he felt the lockdowns and other safety measures imposed by government agencies were over-zealous, even ‘fascist’, and damaged business.
At about the same time, one of his children declared they were transgender, prompting Musk to rail against identity politics and what he termed the ‘woke mind virus’.
And his influence is turbo-charged by his control of X, and over-powering personal presence on it – his total of 210.2 million followers dwarfs Trump’s 96.7 million MAGA army on the platform.
Musk is now surely the most powerful unelected person on the planet by some margin. He has long loved to sound off about political issues on social media but, thanks largely to his relationship with Trump, what he has to say can no longer be dismissed as the deranged ramblings of an inveterate keyboard ‘troll’.
Politicians, corporations and countries around the world nowadays feel torn about how to respond to his attacks, fearing they risk offending Trump.
And that seems only to make Musk even more determined to flex his political muscles – and say the things he’s always complained that Silicon Valley’s in-built Left-wing bias has previously prevented people from putting online.
The UK has become a perennial target. Musk, a South African by birth but whose paternal grandmother hailed from Liverpool, has been accused by critics of having a wildly outdated view of this country.
But his friend and ally, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, says Musk ‘genuinely fears that the mother country of the English-speaking world is going down the tubes and he agrees Britain needs reform’.
His animus towards Keir Starmer and the Labour Government has become even more pronounced in recent weeks.
Musk has jibed that ‘very few companies’ want to invest in Starmer’s Britain. On Thursday, Musk even called for a new UK general election.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch may have briefly revelled in the PM’s discomfort, but it wasn’t long before Musk turned his firepower on her, putting a ‘fact check alert’ on tweets in which she claimed Reform UK had faked its membership numbers.
Musk is now surely the most powerful unelected person on the planet by some margin, writes Tom Leonard
Instead of hitting back at Musk – a fairly thankless task on X –Badenoch clearly decided it made more sense to piggy back on one of his interventions.
After Home Office minister Jess Phillips this week declined to support Oldham Council’s request for an independent inquiry into historic child sexual exploitation in the area between 2011 and 2014, Musk attacked the decision as ‘disgraceful’ and said: ‘She deserves to be in prison’.
He later followed up with an attack on Starmer, accusing him of failing to prosecute child rapists in Oldham and Greater Manchester when he was Director of Public Prosecutions.
Badenoch chimed in with a statement saying an inquiry into ‘the rape gangs scandal’ was ‘long overdue’.
Not that it did her much good. When Farage, who last month posted a photo of himself and Reform’s treasurer meeting Musk at Mar-a-Lago, accused the Tories of hypocrisy by never launching an inquiry into the issue when they were in power, Musk – who is rumoured to be considering a $100 million donation to Reform – responded: ‘Exactly. Time for Reform.’
In fact, Musk thinks it’s time for anti-immigration parties across Europe to take power – and he’s never afraid to say so. Last weekend, it was the turn of German mainstream politicians to be outraged, when he endorsed the far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in a guest opinion piece for the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. Musk wrote that the AfD was the ‘last spark of hope for this country’.
The AfD opposes immigration into Germany, especially by Muslims, and is running second in opinion polls.
Given Germany’s understandable sensitivity over Right-wing parties, both its ruling and opposition parties were apoplectic, the former dismissing Musk’s opinions as ‘nonsense’. They angrily accused Musk of trying to interfere in federal elections due in February following the collapse of the coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Musk has called for Scholz to resign immediately after a Saudi migrant drove a car into a Christmas market on December 20, killing five people. ‘Incompetent fool,’ Musk chided.
He argued that his ‘significant investments’ in Germany, namely Tesla’s first ‘gigafactory’ in Europe, qualify him to speak out about Europe’s largest economy.
But he has expressed support for anti-immigration parties across Europe. In November, he called for the sacking of Italian judges who questioned the legality of a government measure to clamp down on illegal immigration by detaining asylum seekers in Albania.
Musk’s comment was splashed on the front page of several Italian newspapers. He has also been making waves on the home front. Last month, he angered many Republicans by demanding they back away from a bipartisan spending deal with the Democrats that would stop the federal government closing down over Christmas.
Musk, who has been lambasted for endlessly sharing incorrect information on social media, this time wrongly claimed that the bill included more aid for Ukraine and money for a new stadium in Washington.
Musk has even threatened to find and fund candidates to take on any Congress members who vote for a spending bill he doesn’t like in primary elections, a process he called ‘voting out’ but which really boils down to him using his money to get his way.
US politicians on both sides have claimed they’ve never come across a political donor who has been allowed so much influence on policy after his preferred candidate won an election.
‘Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government,’ complained Left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders on X. ‘The richest man on Earth, President Elon Musk, doesn’t like it. Will Republicans kiss the ring? Billionaires must not be allowed to run our government.’
Musk has jibed that ‘very few companies’ want to invest in Keir Starmer’s Britain and on Thursday, the tycoon even called for a new UK general election
But for the moment, one of them very much looks like he could soon be doing exactly that. Musk got his way over the spending bill, announcing last Wednesday on X (of course) that ‘the terrible bill is dead,’ and adding the Latin phrase Vox Populi, Vox Dei, which means ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God’.
Rather less successfully, he clashed with anti-immigration MAGA supporters and their determination to ‘protect Americans’ jobs’ over his backing for continuing to give US worker visas to skilled foreigners needed to fill senior jobs in Silicon Valley.
Musk later deleted his endorsement of a post on X claiming that American workers were ‘retarded’. In a rare defeat, Musk – who had initially pledged to go to ‘war’ over the issue – later admitted the visas in question were ‘broken’ and proposed reforming the system, even though Trump sided with him.
It could yet turn nasty. Former Trump strategist and MAGA icon Steve Bannon warned Musk that if he kept ‘lecturing people about the way things are going to be’ – ‘We’re going to rip your face off.’
Curiously, while Musk is making new enemies in the West, over in the East it’s a different matter.
While many Americans regard China as one of their nation’s principal foes, Musk sees only business opportunities. Shanghai is home to Tesla’s biggest car plant outside the US, a mammoth megafactory that produces 950,000 vehicles a year.
The person who has been described as his ‘secret weapon’ in China is his 76-year-old mother Maye. A model, author and global ambassador for brands including Chinese consumer electronics company Oppo and mattress-maker Aise Baobao, she has risen seemingly effortlessly on the coat tails of her son.
Last month alone, she was a guest at a gala dinner in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, walked the red carpet for a cosmetics company in another, Wuhan, and wherever she went, was asked to sign copies of the Chinese edition of her book, A Woman Makes A Plan, which she describes as ‘a bestseller’ in China.
Locals are said to be smitten by her elegance and inspiring personal story – the Canada-born Maye survived domestic abuse, raised three children by herself and has a modelling career that has spanned five decades.
However, she remains at heart just a ‘brand extension’ of her ubiquitous son, helping to keep the family’s name in the spotlight in a country which is Tesla’s second biggest market.
But Musk’s cosy relationship with senior Chinese leaders and his description of their country as ‘truly amazing’ has raised hackles in the US Congress where some have accused him of putting profits before patriotism.
The same charge has also been levelled at him over his relationship with America’s other great enemy, Russia.
The Wall Street Journal reported in October that Musk has been in regular contact with Vladimir Putin in ‘secret conversations’ covering personal, business and geopolitical matters.
Musk has been increasingly vocal in opposing US military aid to Ukraine. During one of their chats, Putin reportedly asked Musk to refrain from activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan – a potentially critical defensive asset – as a favour to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Musk mocked the claims on X without officially denying them.
Some say that Musk’s seemingly endless political interference ultimately comes down to money. Since Trump’s second election victory, Tesla’s share price has nearly doubled and his personal fortune has soared. A second Trump term will work wonders for his business empire.
And yet there’s surely no financial incentive for him to attack the UK over crime or Germany over immigration. One theory is that Musk genuinely believes he can save the planet, whether that is building colonies on Mars (for a future time when the Earth is spent) or saving it from the ‘woke mind virus’.
It’s also said that he’s jumped into politics essentially because he can – the nerd who was bullied mercilessly at school is avenging himself on the world.
His biographer Walter Isaacson wrote that one of his girlfriends said Musk has a ‘demon mode’ and thrives on ‘storm’. Isaacson says Musk ‘doesn’t like things when they are going well. He is addicted to drama.’
Musk also likes to have a laugh. Some assumed he must have been doing that again when – a few days ago – he called on people to share more ‘positive, beautiful or informative’ content on X.
Perhaps, suggested critics, he might like to lead the way.
