Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been awfully close ever since the former president won his third bid for the White House two weeks ago. At a UFC event at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, Trump sat next to his newest billionaire backer in the front row, where he had to remind Musk to stop laughing at stuff on his phone and pay attention to the fight. At Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago, Musk has set up camp, calling himself the “first buddy,” taking meetings with the president, and even getting his own theme music at dinners with club members.
Now the first buddy tour is heading to south Texas, and this time Musk is the star of the show. On Tuesday at 5 p.m., Trump is expected to join him at a rocket launch at the SpaceX facility minutes from the Mexican border. SpaceX is conducting its sixth test of its Starship rocket — the model Musk hopes will eventually ferry astronauts to Mars. Already, it is the most powerful rocket ever built and will soon be used to launch the newest generation of Musk’s larger Starlink satellites. With the president-elect watching, Musk hopes that his engineers will be able to recreate the success of their launch in October, when a pair of mechanical arms called the “chopsticks” caught the rocket booster in midair, allowing for reuse.
Musk, who spent $119 million on a pro-Trump PAC this election, has seen his net worth surge by more than $62 billion in the past two months. Most of that growth is thanks to a surge of Tesla stock after Election Day from investors betting on a Trump administration being good to his companies. With over $15 billion in federal contracts at SpaceX alone, Musk would have been closely entwined with the government regardless of the election result. Under Trump, he is now the co-chair of the new Department of Government Efficiency — an advisory committee with the goal of slashing federal spending that, presumably, has nothing to do with his own contracts.
Not everyone on the transition team is as happy as Musk about this new arrangement. As Musk lobbies for cabinet appointees and tariff policies, other advisers are reportedly thinking that the richest man in the world is overplaying his hand. Musk has reportedly gotten into a shouting match with adviser Boris Epshteyn over cabinet picks. One source told the Washington Post there was a feeling that Musk is now acting as “co-president,” adding “people are not happy.”
