Musk has become a driving force in American politics in the past year, rising from Silicon Valley mogul and Washington outsider to a conservative thought leader in Trump’s inner circle.
Whether he is on Capitol Hill, sitting alongside Trump at Mar-a-Lago or broadcasting his views on X, his social media platform, Musk has already offered a preview of how he plans to use his new political sway under a Trump administration.
Observers predict the dynamic is likely to continue, if not intensify, once Trump officially takes office and Musk takes the helm of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) panel aimed at slashing government costs.
“My instinct is, and we’re already kind of hearing murmurings of this, is that Trump is going to have a hard time wrangling Musk,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has increasingly found himself in Trump’s orbit — and in the most prominent circles in Republican politics — since throwing his support behind the president-elect and pouring at least a quarter of a billion dollars into boosting his campaign.
Musk has already shown his ability to drive the political conversation, often on X, where his posts reach millions of users in a matter of hours.
His reach played out last month when he and DOGE co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy fired off dozens of posts on X expressing their intense opposition to a short-term funding plan rolled out by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
The two stirred up conversation and doubts about the bill among lawmakers for hours before Trump or Vice President-elect JD Vance voiced their opposition to the bill. The pressure campaign forced Johnson back to the drawing table.
Owens, a former senior economic policy adviser to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), said these posts created “choppy waters” for Johnson and Trump, as Democrats dubbed Musk the “co-president.”
“I absolutely think he’s [Musk] going to be weighing in on congressional negotiations, on the appropriations process, on the tax fight, on agency rulemaking,” Owens told The Hill.
“I would expect nothing less. … He’s fired off a huge number of opinions about what the government should be doing, what agencies should be doing, what enforcement actions should be taken, and the like.”
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com on Wednesday morning.
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