Elon Musk, unelected president and agent of chaos
The world’s wealthiest businessman, now a close confidant to Trump, is leveraging his newfound political influence to advance his agenda unchecked. But how long can his honeymoon with the president-elect last?
Friday was just another day on Elon Musk’s social media platform X. Aided by an algorithm that always seems to favor the owner, his nearly 210 million followers — now greeted with the phrase “The people voted for major government reform” — watched as Musk clashed with the racist far right over the visas Silicon Valley companies use to recruit skilled foreign workers. They also received a mixed array of promotional messages from his companies — Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, and X itself — heard Musk (a father of 12) warn of the global decline in birth rates, and listened to his promises of colonizing Mars. They also saw Musk amplify the argument of a Covid denier with just 327 followers, who defended Americans’ right to buy guns “so we don’t get locked in camps for having a virus with a 99.9% survival rate.”
