Elon Musk was gloating publicly even before the polls closed Tuesday night. And as the evening wore on, the tech billionaire grew both brasher and more triumphant. “The future is gonna be so 🔥 🇺🇸🇺🇸,” he wrote above a photo of himself speaking with President-elect Donald Trump and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White. “Let that sink in,” he added, next to a meme of himself in the Oval Office late on Tuesday night.
Musk has plenty to celebrate, from Tesla’s soaring stock price to the continued tax cuts Trump has promised corporations and ultra-wealthy households. The Republican mega-donor, who dropped almost $120 million on Trump’s reelection effort, is now poised for a prominent role in Trump’s second administration. His various companies also stand to gain billions of dollars in federal contracts under Trump, and the new administration could potentially curtail the numerous investigations and other regulatory actions that federal agencies have initiated against his business interests. “The future is gonna be fantastic,” Musk wrote Wednesday morning, next to a picture of a SpaceX rocket.
How “fantastic” that future looks to non-billionaires remains to be seen. Trump has said he’d like to task Musk with leading a new government efficiency commission, which could slash as much as $2 trillion from the federal budget. Leading economists, as well as Musk himself, have both warned that the level of austerity could cause widespread economic hardship for Americans. There are also significant outstanding questions about how Musk wielded his wealth and public influence in the lead-up to the election.
Two lawsuits now allege that Musk and his pro-Trump political action committee violated state or federal laws with their $1-million-a-day pseudo-lottery. Under Musk, X—formerly Twitter—has also become a hub for misinformation, with two recent investigations finding that the platform appears to favor right-wing content. Musk seemed to mock those criticisms on Tuesday and Wednesday, insisting that X was a bastion of truth, while falsely claiming that “legacy media lied relentlessly to the public.” In a Tuesday evening livestream, Musk vowed that his pro-Trump PAC would continue to operate past the election and “weigh in heavily” on future races.
In his acceptance speech to supporters, Trump called Musk “a new star,” “an amazing guy,” and “a super-genius.” “We have to protect our geniuses,” he added. “We don’t have that many of them.”
