Elon Musk has long been a controversial figure in the public domain. From his tirades on Covid-19 lockdown measures to his support for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, Musk’s behavior has often been erratic and unpredictable. While there is little to debate regarding Musk’s business acumen and financial success, his public antics have served to demonstrate that such figures should not be looked to for guidance or leadership in the realm of politics. Ironically, however, with the reelection of Trump and his newly formed friendship with Musk, it seems even more of this type of behavior is yet to come. Only this time, the stakes might be a little higher, with millions of people’s livelihoods and futures at risk.
Elon Musk’s life story begins in in Pretoria, South Africa, where he was born to a wealthy family and where he briefly attended university before moving to Canada. After beginning school in Montreal, he eventually transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he later graduated with dual degrees in economics and physics. Later, in 1995, he moved to California to attend Stanford University. However, he never enrolled in classes, instead electing to found the company Zip2 with his brother. The company was acquired by Compaq in 1999. The same year, Musk co-founded X.com, which, in 2000, merged with another company named Confinity to form PayPal. Then, in 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for a sum of $1.5 billion dollars (Blystone, n.d.).
Using his newfound wealth from the sale of PayPal, Musk subsequently founded SpaceX, a spaceflight services company. In 2004, Musk also invested electric-vehicle manufacturer Tesla, where he eventually became CEO. Over the years, Musk has continued to expand his business empire over the years, founding several different companies. Most recently, In 2022, he acquired Twitter, rebranding the service as X and in March 2023, Musk founded xAI, an artificial-intelligence company. In general, Musk tends to emphasize Artificial Intelligence as well as space exploration and transportation related industries in his business ventures (Blystone, n.d.).
The saga of Musk’s rise to prominence and the development of his enigmatic public persona dates back to his first rise as CEO of Tesla. Musk’s fortune originally stems from his role as founder or owner of numerous companies, including the aforementioned Twitter and Space-X. Specifically, as a result of these business ventures, Musk has amassed a net worth of over 320 billion dollars (Elon Musk, n.d.). Musk’s influence arguably extends even deeper than his pockets, with a broad reach across a variety of different industries. Currently, Musk is most well-known in popular culture for his Electric Vehicles ventures with Tesla, as well as his role as the, oftentimes outspoken, CEO of X, formerly known as Twitter.
However, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Along with this rise to fame and fortune has come an increasing number of controversial incidents, occurring mainly on his X account. From posting revealing financial information related to his companies, to openly endorsing the cryptocurrency Dogecoin prompting wide shifts in its public valuation, to mocking the use of preferred pronouns for transgender individuals, Musk has increasingly pushed the boundaries of what is socially acceptable for someone so famous and influential (Vasishth et al, 2023; Chaotic and crass, 2022). Recently, Musk has come under fire for his unwillingness to stop the spread of misinformation on his social media platform X, which is being used more and more by extreme right wingers as a haven to communicate and organize. At the same time, Musk has increasingly aligned himself politically with the far right, allowing Trump to use his platform to launch political campaigns (Ortutay, 2024). Musk also played a major role in financing Trump’s campaign and has recently voiced his support for various far right movement in Europe (Schouten et al, 2024; Nicholls et al, 2025). These warning signs with regards to Musk’s behavior, specifically his disregard for social mores and allegiance with right-wing extremists, among others, all point to one thing, Musk’s ability to lead effectively as a politician should be considered dubious at best.
Unfortunately, being successful financially, evenly to the point of someone like Elon Musk or Donald Trump, does not mean you are then qualified to work in politics or understand economics very well. It also does not mean that you are then inherently a trustworthy person or even a good leader. If it did, we would just pick the richest people in the world to run our countries and institutions. Conversely, having said wealth can often instill a false sense of confidence, as we can now see is happening in real time with regards to the policy ideas Trump and Musk plan to implement. These policies, like Trump’s tariff plan, have little to no support from academics. However, in Trump and Musk’s worldview, the exorbitant amounts of money that they have earned means they now can choose the correct policies in a field they have never truly studied and in which they have basically zero experience working. Needless to say, the results are not expected to be beneficial for anyone involved.
It’s clear that Musk himself views unregulated capitalism as the ideal system and that he is willing to put his own money on the table to facilitate political outcomes he deems desirable. This behavior is ironic as Musk himself demonstrates the problems associated with such a system, in that it privileges wealth over experience and know-how. The idea of Musk representing the U.S in foreign negotiations over someone like Joe Biden or Kamala Harris is frightening. For example, just recently, after Trump won the election, Trump shared a call with Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, on how to deal with the current crisis in the region. Musk was also in attendance for the call as a last-minute decision. In reflecting on this scenario for a moment, one has to ask; are we really to believe that Musk (or Trump for that matter) is going to be more effective in dealing with this complex foreign policy issue, for which he has no experience, than someone like Biden or Harris, who each have over 20 years of political work under their belt. This is nonsense, but it’s also a reality that Americans are going to have to face sooner rather than later.
In general, Musk’s rise to political power represents the trouble with the capitalist system as currently constructed. Specifically, through the accumulation of wealth and capital, the idea of qualifications or job experience goes out the window and the power of the dollar reigns supreme. That can work for a little bit, maybe even a little while, but sooner or later, when someone isn’t really qualified for their position and only got it because they had more money than everyone else, it’s going to manifest itself in one way or another.
To conclude, there are few figures that can achieve such a bizarre mix of nonsensical tirades and humorous antics as Musk. In the past, at least for those not employed by him, these antics have been something we’ve watched from afar, a spectacle difficult to watch and yet something we can’t look away from. However, beginning on January 20th, with Musk and Trump’s relationship seemingly as close as ever, Musk’s bizarre tirades and mood swings and their impact on American policy, foreign and domestic, are going to become a reality for every single American. One can only hope that the country’s political and economic system will be strong enough to withstand it.
References:
Blystone, D. (n.d.). Who is Elon Musk?. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/061015/how-elon-musk-became-elon-musk.asp
Forbes Magazine. (n.d.). Elon Musk. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/#:~:text=Real%20Time%20Net%20Worth&text=Elon%20Musk%20cofounded%20seven%20companies,of%20up%20to%20%243.5%20billion.
Guardian News and Media. (2022, April 26). Chaotic and crass: A brief timeline of Elon Musk’s history with Twitter. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/25/timeline-elon-musks-history-twitter
Nicholls, C., Tanno, S., & Brennan, E. (2025, January 9). Musk urges Germans to vote for AFD in latest involvement in European politics. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/09/world/musk-livestream-afd-weidel-germany-intl/index.html
Ortutay, B. (2024, August 13). How elon musk uses his X social media platform to amplify right-wing views. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-elon-musk-uses-his-x-social-media-platform-to-amplify-right-wing-views
S. Vasishth, S. K. Sharma, A. K. Nayyar and K. Vijayakuamar, "Impact of Elon Musk’s tweets on the price of Dogecoin using Sentiment Analysis," 2023 International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communication and Applied Informatics (ACCAI), Chennai, India, 2023, pp. 1-8, doi: 10.1109/ACCAI58221.2023.10199593.
Schouten, F., Wright, D., & Matthews, A. L. (2024, December 6). Musk spent at least a quarter-billion dollars to help elect Donald Trump, new filings show | CNN politics. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/05/politics/elon-musk-trump-campaign-finance-filings/index.html