When forming the Trump government, Musk has a significant influence on its political decisions, which can change the future of the United States.
There are only a few hours left before the inauguration of the newly elected US President Donald Trump. On January 20, Donald Trump will officially enter the White House as the new head of America. Since he won the presidential election, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has literally been with him every step of the way. He already rents a cottage on the territory of Trump's residence and is actively involved in the formation of his office. Why Elon Musk became Trump's right hand and how will this affect Ukraine.
Lyudmila Trufin spoke about this in an exclusive with TSN.UA.
There are only a few hours left before the inauguration of the newly elected US president. On January 20, Donald Trump will officially enter the White House as the new head of America. Since he won the presidential election, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has literally not left his side. He already rents a cottage on the territory of Trump's residence and is actively involved in the formation of his office. Why Elon Musk became Trump's right hand and how this will affect Ukraine – I will tell you in a moment. With you, TSN UE news and I. Subscribe to our channel and click to taste, and we will move on to the news.
Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency
This is probably one of the most discussed issues today. According to The New York Times, Musk will use office space right next to the White House. It will house the Department of Government Effectiveness, which will be headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, an American entrepreneur of Indian origin and owner of a biopharmaceutical company. Despite its name, the Department of Government Effectiveness will not be a government structure, which means it will not be funded from the American federal budget. This is such a populist initiative, because during the Trump election campaign, Musk promised to reduce all US budget expenditures to $ 2 trillion. This is what the newly created department should do. However, the other day Musk suggested that $ 2 trillion is unlikely to be an affordable target.
< h2 > Musk's secret connection with the Russians
< p >Elon Musk, the richest man in the world with a fortune of $400 billion, the owner and founder of seven companies, including SpaceX, Tesla and the social network X, was born in South Africa. At the age of 17, he moved to Canada, and then to the United States. Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 (it became his third company after PayPal and another one that produced software) immediately after the Russians refused to sell him their rockets. This is a well-known story told by former NASA deputy Laurie Garver and SpaceX co-founder Jim Cantrell. Elon Musk came to Russia in 2001 to buy Russian rockets for his future space project. According to them, Musk was almost spat in the face, which prompted him to found SpaceX and deprive NASA of dependence on Roscosmos. Musk himself has publicly confirmed that he traveled to Russia three times to buy rockets and then fly to Mars.
“And I can tell you, it was pretty weird going there and telling the Russian missile forces that I wanted to buy the two biggest intercontinental ballistic missiles, but they could keep the nuclear weapons at the same time… They thought I was crazy. But I had the money.”
Musk's Regular Contacts with Putin
This story took place a quarter of a century ago. Many of Musk's entourage said that since then he had been full of hostility towards Russians. However, already in October 2024, information appeared that Elon Musk maintains regular contacts with Putin. And this has been going on since the end of 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing American intelligence. This was partly confirmed by Putin's press secretary Peskov. According to him, Putin and Musk spoke only once, discussing space and future technologies. However, that's not all.
“Elon Musk and the head of the Kremlin continued to communicate throughout 2024, when Musk began to question further US support for Ukraine and became an active supporter and campaigner for Trump in the elections. And at one point, Putin even asked Musk not to deploy Starlink in Taiwan. Even earlier, in August 2024, American media reported that Russian money was behind Musk’s purchase of the former Twitter.
In December 2024, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian reported that as the head of SpaceX, Elon Musk does not have access to top-level classified information due to drug use and contacts with foreign citizens. Although Musk himself denied these publications in the press, the publications, citing sources, reported that Musk smoked marijuana in public places and said that he had a recipe for the psychedelic ketamine.
“In 2018, he took several tablets of acid at a party organized in Los Angeles. The following year, he partied on “magic” mushrooms in the West in Mexico”
Musk in the European elections
Indeed, if you listen to Elon Musk's broadcasts and interviews, you get the impression that he is out of his mind. For example, during a live broadcast with the leader of the pro-Russian and right-wing populist party “Alternative for Germany” Alice Weidel on January 9, Musk said that “any self-respecting civilization should have at least two planets.”
“I assume that there will be cases when future Martians will actually come and help and save us when there is an emergency, just as America helped save the rest of the world during the First and Second World Wars and the Cold War”
His conversation with Alice Weidel is not only a legitimization of the pro-Russian party a little more than a month before the early elections in Germany, which will be held on February 23. By the way, now, according to various opinion polls, this party is in second place with 21% support. Musk's broadcast from Weidel also became the apogee of his public support for the pro-Russian party. A month ago, Elon Musk began to support it on his X page, saying that “only the Alternative for Germany can save Germany.” And during the broadcast with Weidel, he said:
“The American people are demanding change. I recommend that people in Germany do the same. I really strongly recommend that people vote for the Alternative for Germany.”
In protest, more than 60 German universities and research organizations have left the social network X. The Ministry of Defense and the Bundeswehr have temporarily suspended the distribution of content on their X pages, preferring WhatsApp. The pages of German government agencies in X are still working. However, according to government spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann, the decision to possibly abandon X is being discussed almost every day. The Bundestag administration has begun checking Musk's statements during the broadcast from Weidel to see if they violate German law on political parties. And top German politicians and officials have publicly called on Elon Musk to meet with them to hear first-hand what narratives the Alternative for Germany is actually promoting.
Election interference and the spread of fakes
As El Pais writes, for his devoted followers, Elon Musk is a genius and a visionary – a modern Leonardo da Vinci, as Argentine President Javier Miley called him. Indeed, it is good to be a genius and the richest man in the world, when your portfolio is full of American government contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Others accuse him of interfering in elections in other countries and spreading outright fakes and lies. And this is true, because Musk has more than 212 million subscribers on X, which is equivalent to the population of Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece combined.
Musk's attacks on the British government
It is no coincidence that the Spanish press is writing about Elon Musk. The fact is that Amazon Kuiper, which provides high-speed Internet via low-orbit satellites and is a direct competitor to Musk's Starlink, has received government permission to operate in Spain. The same applies to the government of Keir Starmer in Britain, against which Elon Musk has launched a real wave of hate and disinformation in order to overthrow it. Musk even launched a vote in X on whether “the US should save Britain from a tyrannical government.” Starmer's government is preparing new rules for regulating the activities of cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence in the country. He is also negotiating with Amazon Kuiper about Internet access via low-orbit satellites, which is already being implemented in Spain. There is no confirmation that Musk's attacks on the British government are related to the protection of his business interests. However, the owner of X has published dozens of messages on social networks, criticizing the British authorities for their reluctance to investigate cases of child abuse. Moreover, Musk personally accused Starmer of covering up these crimes when he headed the Crown Prosecution Service.
The Labour government led by Keir Starmer did indeed refuse to investigate child abuse cases in cities in the north of England. However, they argued that the local police would do a better job. But Elon Musk, having distorted and distorted the information, launched a real information campaign against the British government. He acted in exactly the same way at the end of December 2024, when the US Congress adopted another temporary budget resolution to avoid a “shutdown” – a halt in funding for all US government agencies. Then Musk published 92 messages in X. For example, in one of them he noted that “with this bill we are funding bioweapons labs.”
What could make Trump and Musk quarrel
Musk ended the wave of hate against the budget resolution when he managed to remove the ban on investments in Chinese companies from the text of the bill. Many experts predict that the Trump administration's policy towards China will be the turning point that will set Musk at odds with the future Trump cabinet. After all, China is the main market for Tesla, which owns a factory in Shanghai. And countering China is a key priority in Trump's foreign policy program.
At the controversial press conference in Mar-a-Lago on January 7, where Trump voiced territorial claims to Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, the 47th president-elect also said that Musk is “a very smart guy and does a very good job” and is unaware of his attacks on European leaders. And in December 2024, when a wave of memes swept through social networks that Musk is actually running Trump and the United States, the 47th American president-elect denied such accusations, emphasizing that “Musk will never become president because he was not born in this country.” However, despite Donald Trump's statements and justifications, no one knows what kind of influence Elon Musk will actually have on US domestic and foreign policy after the inauguration. French President Emmanuel Macron has already publicly criticized Elon Musk's actions, calling his attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries a challenge of the 21st century.
“If someone had told us ten years ago that the owner of one of the world's largest social networks would support a new reactionary international and would directly interfere in elections, particularly in Germany, who could have imagined it?”
True, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Maloney, who met with Trump at his residence in Florida on January 11, on the contrary, said that Musk is not “dangerous for democracy.”
“Real interference in elections occurs when rich people use resources to finance parties and associations around the world to influence politics, as in the case of George Soros. The problem is that Musk is rich and influential? Or that he is not leftist?”
Although what Elon Musk is doing now is using the information resource X and other platforms to promote specific pro-Russian and far-right parties in other countries, which is direct foreign interference.
Recall that earlier we wrote about why Elon Musk has become Trump's right hand and how it will affect Ukraine.
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