Trump and Musk's talk of a cabinet post is just air, but we shouldn't ignore it | Brian Merchant

Bwhat if Elon Musk went to Washington to serve in Donald Trump's White House? I guess there have been worse suggestions for a comedy sketch. Armando Iannucci of “Veep” could probably do something with it. Unfortunately, the idea is all too real. Sort of.

A Reuters reporter recently asked Trump if he would consider appointing Musk to his cabinet. “He's a very smart guy,” Trump replied. “I certainly would, if he did it, I absolutely would. He's a brilliant guy.” Musk responded with an AI-generated rendering of himself next to a decade-old crypto meme and tweeted, “I'm ready to serve.” It's not the first time the idea has come up – Trump floated the possibility back in May – but it's the first time Musk has responded in the affirmative, tongue-in-cheek or otherwise.

The exchange is the culmination of a series of awkward displays of friendship and mutual admiration between the two, who were on icy terms as recently as the spring. After all, the two are cut from remarkably similar cloth. Each craves attention as a flame craves oxygen: incessantly and at any cost.

We can pretty much rule out the idea of ​​Musk actually becoming a Cabinet member or taking on a role that would see him officially step down from his job as CEO of half a dozen companies (Tesla, SpaceX, X, Neuralink, the Boring Company, and xAI, at last count). More than any other founder, Musk has Is his companies, and they are him. Investors aren't backing a car manufacturer. They're backing Tesla, the revolutionary electric car company with autonomous driving features, run by the richest and second most ubiquitous man in the world. Musk knows as well as anyone that if he were to retire, his companies' stock prices would plummet, and his fortune with them. As funny as it is to imagine Musk, Energy Secretary, stumbling his way through a press conference about natural gas prices, it's not going to happen.

That we even have to consider taking something like this seriously is a testament to how much both men have distorted the nature of our heavily mediated reality through trolling and the sheer power of their egos. And unfortunately, I think we should take it seriously! Not because it's at all likely, but because it's worth examining what the request itself reveals about the relationship between Trump and Musk and the handing over of a once-central platform – X, formerly Twitter – to forces preoccupied with conspiracy and propaganda at this precarious moment.

It's hard to remember now, but Musk long described himself as a moderate in politics. He didn't get involved much, other than accepting the tax breaks his companies received through Obama's stimulus package and occasionally throwing in a few tranquilizers. Why should he? By 2015, his companies were receiving nearly $5 billion in subsidies from Democratic policies, and because he ran a leading electric car company, he was popular with liberals.

Since then, Musk has been drifting to the right – until he bought Twitter in 2022, turned it into X, and that trend became a jolt. Perhaps spurred by criticism of the treatment of workers at Tesla's flagship factory or a growing obsession with identity politics, he has begun to spread right-wing content, share transphobic memes, spread baseless conspiracy theories about Democrats, complain about immigration, and stoke racial division in the UK. When Trump survived an assassination attempt in July, Musk was well prepared – he immediately supported the former president and has been fully on board ever since.

Trump has made his long-awaited return to the social network following Musk's endorsement. So far, he's posted campaign ads and an AI-generated image of Kamala Harris as a communist leader. Ugly, but typical stuff. Musk hosted Trump on Spaces, a livestream feature of X, where after a half-hour of technical difficulties, they blabbed for two hours, talking past each other about immigration, Harris and nuclear bombings. The two have performed a dance of public online friendship — posting AI-generated images of each other, exchanging complimentary remarks in the press and now musing about Musk in a Trump White House. The rendering Musk posted on Tuesday showed him at a podium labeled “Department of Governmental Efficiency,” or “Doge,” a half-joking reference to the Dogecoin cryptocurrency that Musk has found endlessly amusing for years. He turned it into a weak punchline on SNL.

Musk may have once claimed it was inappropriate, arguing that X was a centrist platform with no political leanings, but that's all moot now. X has blatantly become a place to spread right-wing memes, projects, and baseless conspiracy theories directly from its owner and most-followed user (195 million at the time of writing). It's what much of the online right has always wanted: a social network that suits their political and cultural preferences and isn't censored by those meddling liberals. The social network is now a shadow of its former self, losing advertisers and credibility even as it has maintained its place as the center of American political news.

Trump remains one of the most obnoxious content creators in the world, and is notorious for tweeting incitement to the Jan. 6 riots, earning him a three-year banishment to the obscure partisan wilderness of Truth Social. What happens when the owner of his favorite platform is an ally and fellow election conspiracy theorist—and instead of turning off the tap, he can turn up the heat? Disinformation experts are bracing themselves.

The Trump-Musk alliance is still in its infancy. If the election takes a darker turn and Trump once again refuses to accept the election results, we can expect Musk to compound the ensuing chaos.

The truth underlying Musk's closer ties to Trump is that he doesn't need to go to Washington to exert influence over our institutions. With his enormous wealth, his bewildered megaphone, and Trump's ear, he already does that.