Trump and Musk's remarks about a Cabinet post are all talk, but we shouldn't ignore them | Brian Merchant

IWhat if Elon Musk went to Washington to work in Donald Trump's White House? I suppose there have been worse proposals for a comedy sketch. Veep's Armando Iannucci could probably do something with it. Sadly, the idea is all too real. Sort of.

A Reuters reporter I recently asked Trump Trump has not commented on whether he would consider appointing Musk to his Cabinet. “He’s a very smart guy,” Trump responded. “I certainly would, if I did it, I certainly 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 am willing to serve.” It’s not the first time the idea has come up. Trump raised the possibility in May – but it is the first time Musk has answered in the affirmative, with or without a wink.

The exchange is the culmination of an escalating series of displays of awkward friendship and mutual admiration between the two, who They were on icy terms As recently as this spring. After all, both are cut from a very similar cloth. Each demands attention the way a flame demands oxygen: incessantly and at any cost.

We can almost rule out the idea of ​​Musk becoming an actual cabinet member, or taking on any role that would require him to officially step away from his job as CEO (at Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI, at last count). More than any other founder, Musk is His companies, and they are him. Investors aren’t backing a carmaker. They’re backing Tesla, the revolutionary electric-vehicle company with self-driving features piloted by the richest and second-most ubiquitous man on the planet. Musk knows as well as anyone that if he walks away, his companies’ stock values ​​will plummet, and his fortunes with them. As funny as it is to imagine Musk, the energy secretary, stumbling through a press conference about natural gas prices, that’s not going to happen.

The fact that we should even consider taking something like this seriously is a testament to how forcefully both men have distorted the nature of our heavily mediated reality through trolling and sheer ego force. And, sadly, I think we should take it seriously. Not because it’s at all likely to happen, but because it’s worth examining what the plea itself reveals about Trump and Musk’s relationship and the ceding of a once-pivotal platform (X, formerly Twitter) to forces preoccupied with conspiracy and propaganda at this precarious moment.

It's hard to remember now, but Musk long proclaimed himself a political moderate. He didn't wade into the fray much, except to accept tax credits granted to his companies by the Obama stimulus bill and toss in the occasional snide comment. Why would he do that? Until 2015, his companies enjoyed a Nearly $5 billion in subsidies Steered in his own way by Democratic policies and by running a leading electric car company, he was much loved by liberals.

Since then, Musk has been on a rightward drift, until he bought Twitter in 2022, turned it into X, and that drift became a lurch. Perhaps criticism over the treatment of workers at Tesla's flagship plant or a growing obsession with identity politics drove him on. He has begun pushing right-wing content, sharing transphobic memespromoting baseless ideas conspiracy theories about democratscomplaining On immigrationand fostering racial division in the UK. When Trump survived an assassination attempt in July, Musk was well prepared: He immediately backed the former president, and has been all in ever since.

Trump made his long-awaited return to the social network after Musk's endorsement. So far, he has posted campaign ads and an AI-generated image of Kamala Harris as a communist leader. Ugly but typical. Musk He welcomed Trump in Spacesa livestream of X, where, after half an hour of technical difficulties, they began to ramble on for two hours, talking incomprehensibly about immigration, Harris and nuclear bombingsThe two have done a public friendship dance online: they posted AI-generated images of eachexchanging glowing comments in the press and now, musing about Musk in a Trump White House. The rendering Musk posted Tuesday showed him at a podium labeled Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge — a half-joking reference to the cryptocurrency Musk has found endlessly amusing for years, Dogecoin. A weak ending on SNL.

While Musk once maintained that X was a centrist platform with no political bias, that’s all gone out the window now. X has openly become a place where baseless right-wing memes, projects, and conspiracy theories are amplified directly by its owner and most followed user (195 million at the time of writing). It’s what much of the online right has said it’s always wanted: a social network that caters to their political and cultural preferences and isn’t censored by those meddling liberals. The social network is a shadow of its former self: It’s losing advertisers and credibility, though it has maintained its place as the center of American political news.

Trump remains one of the world's most noxious content creators, best known for inciting the January 6 riots in tweets. That earned him a three-year exile in the dark, wild, partisan corners of Truth Social. What happens when the owner of your preferred platform is an ally and fellow election conspiracy theorist and, instead of turning off the tap, can turn up the heat? Disinformation experts They are preparing.

The Trump-Musk alliance is in its early stages. If the election takes a darker turn and Trump again refuses to acknowledge the election results, we can expect Musk to aggravate any chaos that may arise.

The truth underpinning Musk’s increasingly close bond with Trump is that he doesn’t have to go to Washington to exert influence over our institutions. With his vast wealth, his blazing megaphone, and Trump’s ear, he already does.