Is Musk The Most Evil Man On Earth? Worse Than Putin Or Trump?
Until I was well into my 30s, I was living in the alternative economy and I didn’t really know any rich people personally— or at least I never thought of the rock musicians I tangentially did know as being rich people, since being rich wasn’t really central to their counter-culture identities. But then my small indie record company had a couple of successes by RomeoVoid and the Red Rockers and major labels (divisions of multinational conglomerates or vertically-integrated corporations) sought me out. It was a very different world and I had to go to a thrift store and buy a tie. But it was the start of meeting rich people. And for those who think getting rich people into government is a good idea because they are already rich and less likely to steal, I have some bad news: the rich are rich because they are the most greedy and avaricious people on earth. Lesson one: Their wealth isn’t a sign of virtue or wisdom (or even talent)— it’s proof that they’ve honed the art of taking more than they give, whether from their workers, their customers or the planet itself and the idea that wealth insulates someone from corruption is laughable; in reality, wealth is its own form of corruption. It skews priorities, consolidates power, and erodes the common good.
At the time, I was struck by how different their priorities were from the world I knew. They weren’t just driven by money— they were consumed by a sense of entitlement, a need to dominate and control. I remember the moment when I made the very conscious decision that would never be me. I wasn’t even rich yet; just doing well, but making more money than anyone in my working class family had ever dreamed of. My direct boss (a kind of supervisor) was one of them— exactly like Trump in fact; at one point, he had even hired Roy Cohn as an advisor. The company was paying me well and I was grateful and they also gave me a generous expense account. I went with my supervisor to a “trade show” in Europe. He tried to show me how I could buy expensive finely-tailored clothes for myself and disguise the expense as a client dinner; I was horrified. Someone else, another junior vice president like myself, couldn’t wait to try it. I felt sick to my stomach for not turning them in to the company’s CFO.
The increasingly rich people I began encountering as I rose through the corporate ranks were, for the most part (there were, thank God, exceptions) all about preserving and enhancing their status. That supervisor I met. He was worth tens of millions of dollars at the time but he was bitter and angry because other people were wealthier than he was. He could never enjoy his wealth because he was always pissed off that this guy or that guy had more than he did. He even regularly stole money. Not just from the company but even from the artists. It got to a point when I had to get away from him and find another job within the corporation where I wouldn’t have to interact with him on any level.
Elon Musk, for all his cosplay as a disruptor, is the ultimate insider— a man whose wealth allows him to manipulate governments and markets while pretending to be the underdog. So why do we keep falling for the myth that someone like Musk— a man who embodies the very worst impulses of greed and ego— is somehow a genius savior rather than a symptom of everything that’s broken about our system? His rise as a cultural and political force demonstrates just how dangerous this dynamic— wealth as form of corruption— really is. His relentless exploitation of subsidies, labor and public trust, is a case study in this phenomenon, of the very wealthy being the most greed-drive among us.
Yesterday, Bess Levin noted that Musk spent more than a quarter billion dollars getting Señor T into the White House, more than any other individual has spent on a campaign in history… “and he now has a job running the Department of Government Efficiency. Separately, Musk’s Tesla has long wanted federal safety regulators to drop a car-crash reporting requirement, and— what’s that we’re hearing? The Trump transition agrees!” Teslas are the most accident-prone vehicles made. If consumers have no way of finding that out… who benefits?
Aside from spending massively on Trump, Musk’s shady SuperPAC, America PAC, spent money bolstering Republican candidates and ripping down Democrats. These were the districts he spent the most in:
CA-41 (defended Republican)
For Ken Calvert- $944,490
Against Will Rollins- $655,410
NJ-07 (defended Republican)
For Thomas Kean- $940,808
Against Sue Altman- $608,523
NY-17 (defended Republican)
For Mike Lawler- $937,862
Against Mondaire Jones- $789,758
CA-45 (district flipped blue)
For Michelle Steel- $795,125
Against Derek Tran- $553,380
OH-13 (district stayed blue)
For Kevin Coughlin- $710,670
Against Emilia Sykes- $502,632
NY-19 (district flipped blue)
For Marc Molinaro- $695,713
Against Josh Riley- $551,533
OH-09 (district stayed blue)
For Derek Merrin- $642,170
Against Marcy Kaptur- $410,357
CA-22 (defended Republican)
For David Valadao- $572,352
Against Rudy Salas- $411,132
ME-02 (district stayed blue)
For Austin Theriault- $552,897
Against Jared Golden- $374,196
IA-03 (defended Republican)
For Zach Nunn- $535,061
Against Lanon Baccam- $282,672
NM-02 (district stayed blue)
For Yvette Herrell- $523,428
Against Gabe Vasquez- $381,772
WA-03 (district stayed blue)
For Joe Kent- $513,937
Against Marie Gluesenkamp Perez- $321,422
NE-02 (defended Republican)
For Donald Bacon- $479,777
Against Tony Vargas- $384,599
AK-AL (district flipped red)
For Nick Begich- $437,193
Against Mary Peltola- $250,988
MI- 07 (district flipped red)
For Tom Barrett- $434,701
Against Curtis Hertel- $434,701
MI- 08 (district stayed blue)
For Paul Junge- $434,311
Against Kristen Rivet- $434,311
MI-10 (defended Republican)
For John James- $432,757
Against Carl Marlinga- $432,757
CO-08 (district flipped red)
For Gabe Evans- $491,917
Against Yadira Caraveo- $370,038
What does all this mean to Musk? Plenty. As Faiz Siddiqui and Trisha Thadani reported Sunday night, his “net worth has climbed by more than $200 billion in 2024, a massive increase in the same year that the world’s richest person spent at least $277 million backing Trump and other Republican candidates. The bulk of the increase, more than $170 billion, has come since Election Day. Trump’s election sent stock in electric-vehicle maker Tesla, a company central to Musk’s wealth and where he is CEO, soaring. Trump has indicated he will be friendly to businesses and investors of all kinds when he returns to office. Musk’s empire is poised to especially benefit from the president-elect’s promised cuts to regulation— and potentially also overt favors to the tech billionaire, who has become a loyal political lieutenant.”
The fortunes of Tesla, the jewel in Musk’s portfolio, are entangled with federal regulation. The billionaire has staked the company’s future on self-driving vehicles and taken the largely unique approach of trying to enable cars bought by consumers to drive themselves without supervision— a concept for which there is not yet a well-established regulatory regime.
Musk said in a July earnings call that regulators are “morally obligated” to clear the path for autonomous vehicles if a company can prove a reliable safety record.
Federal approval for Tesla’s Cybercab, an autonomous vehicle the company hopes to deploy by around 2027, is now seen as more likely because of Trump’s promises to cut regulation and his close relationship with Musk.
Musk also said in October he would use the future DOGE panel to help create a federal approval process for autonomous vehicles. On Friday, Reuters reported that Trump’s transition team had recommended axing a federal reporting requirement for crashes involving vehicles with driver-assistance features— a policy that it said Tesla opposes.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has used that public data in investigations and recalls into the company’s technology. Removing the reporting requirement could ease the scrutiny on Tesla and autonomous-vehicle makers.
Dan Ives, an analyst at financial firm Wedbush Securities, wrote last month that “Trump will fast track the autonomous and AI initiatives in our view over the next 12 to 18 months.” That would be a “game changer” for Tesla, he said.
Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at auto industry ratings and research provider Edmunds, said that significant uncertainty remains for the company’s work on autonomous driving but that the regulatory outlook now appeared clearer. “I imagine that things will go in Tesla’s direction— at least for the next four years,” she said.
Musk’s assets also include significant shares in four private companies where he is an executive or owner: SpaceX, Neuralink, social media company Twitter and artificial intelligence developer xAI.
SpaceX and Neuralink also operate in heavily regulated industries that could benefit from Musk’s role on the efficiency commission and his desire to ease regulations across the federal government. The rocket maker has become essential to the U.S. space program and could benefit from policy changes made by Trump or his pick to lead NASA, billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman.
Isaacman has twice orbited the planet on private SpaceX flights including a September mission that saw him perform the first spacewalk by a private citizen. The company recently completed a tender offer that made it the world’s most valuable private start-up, Bloomberg News reported, adding roughly $50 billion to Musk’s net worth.
…The Trump transition has said it will ensure those involved with the DOGE group Musk was picked to co-chair are compliant with legal guidelines on conflicts of interest.
Democrats in Congress said the combination of Musk’s election spending, expectations that Trump will create policies favorable to the tech mogul and the recent increase in Musk’s net worth could ethically compromise the incoming administration.
“There is an outrageous and urgent conflict of interest for Elon Musk, a billionaire with business interests like Tesla, but also covering a wide range of industries, to be given any responsibility for corporate welfare disguised as government efficiency,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) said.
“Dismantling safety rules and oversight concerning self-driving vehicles simply drives up the stock price and undermines safety— with benefits to him and shareholders but not to drivers and others on the road.”
Blumenthal said Musk recently lobbied Republicans on Capitol Hill to clear a regulatory pathway for autonomy, the issue that later sent Tesla’s stock price soaring.
Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA), a longtime critic of Tesla’s approach to advanced driver-assistance features, said on Twitter earlier this month that Musk is “already getting a return on his investment in Trump.”
In a statement to The Post, Markey said that relaxing rules for self-driving cars would “turn our public roads into one big testing facility for a company owned by the world’s richest man.”
“I will do everything in my power to make sure Elon Musk doesn’t get to recklessly bend the rules to line his pockets,” Markey said.
At the same time Joe Palazzolo, Emily Glazer and Micah Maidenberg were explaining why Musk has been unable to get a top security clearance. They noted that even “as Space X deepened its ties with the national-security agencies in recent years, the company’s lawyers advised senior executives not to seek a higher security clearance for Musk that would give him access to details about sensitive programs SpaceX is involved in… Musk would have had to answer questions from the government about his contacts with foreign nationals and drug use [ketamine]… In internal discussions, the lawyers and executives posited scenarios in which Musk might inadvertently disclose secrets to foreign officials with whom he regularly speaks [like his regular contact with] Putin since late 2022.”
Those concerns could soon become irrelevant… As president, Trump will have the power to give Musk and others working for DOGE broad access to classified information as they search for cuts.
Although Trump hasn’t indicated publicly whether he intends to do that, SpaceX already has been scouting locations for a secure facility where Musk and other DOGE staffers could review highly classified information.
…Musk’s current top-secret clearance gives him access to some national-security secrets, but he lacks special authorizations that the government requires of most SpaceX employees who work on classified programs, according to the people familiar with the matter. Those employees— more than 400— have permissions for what is known as “sensitive compartmented information,” the government’s term for need-to-know secrets about how intelligence is collected and where it comes from, one of the people said. A smaller number of SpaceX employees have access to secrets the government deems even more sensitive called special access programs.
Musk’s top-secret clearance, without those authorizations, doesn’t entitle him to access certain information about SpaceX’s spy satellite program, called Starshield, which offers satellite hardware and services to national-security agencies, the people said. He isn’t allowed to enter most SpaceX facilities where classified work is done and discussed, and he rarely is privy to classified elements of cargo that his rockets blast into space, such as sensors and other hardware attached to spy satellites.
The CEOs of Boeing, Lockheed Martin and their rocket joint venture, United Launch Alliance, have authorizations for sensitive compartmented information, according to people familiar with their clearances.
Musk had a secret-level clearance before he secured the top-secret clearance in 2022, a process that took years, according to people familiar with his clearance. The unusually long government review of his application was believed within SpaceX to have been the result of Musk’s 2018 podcast interview with Joe Rogan in which he smoked marijuana, which is illegal under federal law, the people said.
“Most of the stuff that I’m aware of…the reason to keep it top secret is it’s so boring,” Musk said in October at a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania in which he disclosed that he had a top-secret clearance. “We don’t want to give exact instructions on how to make a nuclear bomb or something like that, but unless there’s a genuine risk to the country, all the information in the government should be public.”
…In January of this year, The Journal reported that Musk used illegal drugs including LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.
…As president, Trump will have the power to authorize access to government secrets and could waive security requirements. The Supreme Court has ruled that the president’s authority to control the flow of national-security information stems from his role as commander in chief.
Trump has said DOGE will exist outside the government and serve in an advisory rather than a decision-making role. Already, Musk and his co-head, biotech company founder Vivek Ramaswamy, have identified the Pentagon as a potential target for spending cuts.
They likely will need special clearances to view sensitive information as they pick through military spending on classified programs, looking for efficiencies. Trump will be in a position to provide them.
In the past Trump famously cleared Ivanka and Jared Kushner for security clearances after they failed to pass muster
The process of granting security clearances is primarily managed by the Office of Personnel Management and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (part of the Department of Defense), but the final decision often involves multiple agencies and layers of oversight. Nominees with complicated financial histories, foreign contacts or questionable backgrounds often face hurdles during the clearance process. This is certainly going to impact figures like Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Peter Navarro and Kash Patel for starters.
As for Trump’s ambassadorial nominees— who need at least Top Secret clearance— many are like a rogue’s gallery of crooked cronies of his, starting with his felonious pals Charlie Kushner (France), Tom Barrack (Turkey) and Bill White (Belgium). Others who are going to have problems being granted Top Secret clearance include Kimberly Guilfoyle (Greece), Peter Lamelas (Argentina), Edward Walsh (Ireland), Lou Rinaldi (Uruguay), Dan Newlin (Colombia), Leandro Rizzuto Jr (OAS), Arthur Fisher (Austria), Ronald Johnson (Mexico), David Perdue (China), Stacey Feinberg (Luxembourg) and Warren Stephens (UK). Ambassadors have to be confirmed by the Senate.