One is the richest man in the world with assets exceeding $410 billion, almost as much as Greece’s total public debt as of last June. The other has a fortune a hundred times less, only 4 billion and something… small, occupying the 319th place in the list of the super rich of Forbes.
He envisions the colonization of Mars. He will be crowned in a few days “planetary” of the Earth for the second time. What entrepreneur Elon Musk has not yet formally acquired is political power. But he will also get her whom he helped to elect for a second term in the White House in order to put America and the world in a “new order”.
Musk, as Secretary of Government Efficiency, is supposed to offer “out-of-government advice and guidance” to eliminate red tape, drastically reduce “excessive government controls,” cut “unnecessary spending” and “reorganize” federal agencies. Trump has hinted that he will attempt to bypass the Senate which approves cabinet appointments. This would allow Musk to remain in charge of his companies (Tesla, X and SpaceX) which simultaneously do billions in business with the US government.
Threatening friends and partners
The other part of Trump’s close relationship with Musk concerns his interventions, through the means and algorithms he controls, in the political affairs of foreign countries. Even before taking office, Trump and Musk have managed to cause a stir by threatening US friends and partners from Panama to Canada to Denmark.
Musk also sparred with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. for all three leaders the billionaire future US secretary interfered in the internal political developments of their countries, even going so far as to demand the immediate resignation of the German chancellor before snap elections on February 23, as well as making suggestions about the leadership of British Right in order to return to power.
The icing on the cake was Musk’s online debate with far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) leader Alice Weidel who claimed that Hitler was a communist and that Angela Merkel had destroyed the country with her immigration and green energy policies . The coffeehouse-style discussion stretched from the Ukraine war and entitlement to the colonization of Mars and Schopenhauer. Weidel unapologetically rolled out the entire far-right agenda, and Musk told Germans to vote her out “or things will get much worse in Germany.”
Will Europe withstand the onslaught of far-right populism and its supporters from the west? How seriously are the European political leaders taking the warning messages from the polls and what are the counterweights to the Trumpism that comes back more fiercely in international relations?
What unites them?
What unites Trump and Musk is not the thirst for money, but the greed for power and through power the promotion of their extreme positions on the economy and society in America and around the world.
Who uses whom more remains to be seen, as does whether these are two sides of the same coin. The American political system has checks and balances that were shaken but withstood Trump’s first term. Will they survive the second one?
