Elon Musk's key role in Trump's campaign may earn him a seat at the White House table

US PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump spent 3 minutes and 55 seconds thanking billionaire Elon Musk during his victory speech in Florida this morning, referring to him as the ‘new star’ of the MAGA movement.

Trump’s praise for Musk’s help during the campaign lasted 1 minute and 20 seconds longer than the time he spent thanking his running mate JD Vance and a total of 3 minutes and 20 seconds more than the time he dedicated to thanking his wife.

The GOP candidate’s near-four minute monologue, about how Musk is an “amazing guy”, began after Trump’s attention was drawn away from his teleprompter and to a member of the crowd who reminded him to thank the businessman.

The owner of X (formerly Twitter), SpaceX and Tesla found himself at the centre of the Trump campaign after he publicly endorsed the Republican candidate two days after there had been an attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania in August.

Both men spoke on Musk’s platform for a meandering conversation, which required him to reinstate Trump’s account – which had been banned following the riots on 6 January 2021.

Musk cited Trump’s dedication to free speech as the primary reason of support but soon the billionaire began using his social media platform X to support and encourage the Republican campaign in the weeks running up to the election.

The South Africa-born businessman used his presence on X to share and repeat the President-elect’s false claims about the economy, immigration and crime and reposted campaign material to his 203 million followers.

As the owner of Twitter, he repurposed the account handle ‘@America’ for a Political Action Committee – an organisation that pools political donations for election candidates – that he had started in support of Trump.

During the campaign, he emboldened young people to register to vote by awarding $1 million/day (€934,00) to one random swing-state voter who signed a petition to “support free speech and the right to bear arms”.

The billionaire also appeared alongside the candidate at many campaign rallies, including when Trump returned to the same site as the attempted assassination last month, and he even hosted favourable rallies of his own without the former president.

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Similarly, the republican candidate spoke positively about Musk to many of his crowds during the last weeks of the election campaign, in his absence, recognising the impact the businessman’s support had on his voter base.

Musk later appeared at the controversial rally at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Appointment

For these efforts, Musk is one of the names in the mix to be given a seat at the table in Trump’s next White House as the head of a new ‘Efficiency Commission’, tasked with slashing public spending on government agencies that, as Musk described, “nobody has heard of”.

The idea dates back to 2022 when Trump criticised the “hundreds of billions of dollars” that were used on “fraud and improper payments” by the Government. He claimed that this was “defrauding” the US taxpayer.

However, critics have argued that just because the vast majority of the public has not heard of a single government agency does not mean that it is a waste of taxpayer money or that the department does not serve an important purpose to members of the public.

Musk has been quick to defend his claims by arguing that his view is that all State agencies “have a duty to spend your (taxpayers’) money well”.

The task would not be the first time the billionaire slashed millions in spending. In 2022, Musk bought Twitter and went on to fire nearly 8,000 employees, which significantly scaled back the development team.

After purchasing Twitter, Musk filmed a video of him walking in the headquarters for the first time, holding a sink and captioned it ‘Let That Sink In’. This morning, he posted a similar, edited image of him holding the sink in the Oval Office.

At the time of the layoffs, Musk argued that the social media company was hemorrhaging money by spending millions paying teams worldwide to operate the website - the majority of whom, according to him, were doing nothing.

Many have since claimed that various functions that were working on the social media website and useful to data collection, transparency and moderation have now since become unavailable.

Musk’s potential appointment could also be a popular move for Trump – particularly as the younger members of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party are keen fans of the billionaire.

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