Elon Musk
Net worth: $1.2 Trillion (as of April 2026, per Forbes)
Who is Elon Musk?
- “Richest man in the world” Elon Musk is a Silicon Valley tech billionaire and businessman. Musk currently serves as the CEO of Tesla, CEO of SpaceX, Chairman of X.com (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter), and is the majority owner of Neuralink and the Boring Company. Musk also played a key role in founding OpenAI.
- Like Peter Thiel and David Sacks, Musk amassed much of his early wealth through the $1.5 billion sale of PayPal to eBay in 2002.
- Although Musk joined PayPal as the company’s Chief Executive Officer in 1999, he was ousted one year later in a move reportedly orchestrated by Thiel, Sacks, and other members of the “PayPal mafia.”
- The 2024 election cycle initiated Musk’s most expensive attempt at electoral electoral influence peddling. The billionaire dumped over $280 million into Republican-aligned PACs such as the Senate Leadership Fund ($10 million), the MAHA Alliance PAC ($3 million), and the dubiously-named RBG PAC ($20.5 million).
- Musk also played a direct role in Trump’s 2024 reelection efforts:
- May 2024: Musk helped create the pro-Trump America PAC.
- July 2024: Musk “fully endorsed” Trump’s presidential bid.
- August 2024: Musk proposed a government efficiency commission and Trump suggested bringing him into the administration to lead this so-called “Department of Government Efficiency.”
- October 2024: Musk joined Trump on the campaign trail.
- November 2024: Trump announced Musk as DOGE co-leader.
- In addition to GOP mega-doning, Musk has increasingly developed an image as a right-wing provocateur. He has been vocal about white birth rates, engaged in virulent transphobia (calling his daughter dead after she came out as trans), and boosted antisemites and neo-Nazis.
How Is Elon Musk Leading The Trump/Right-Wing Corporitist Agenda?
- Under the temporary designation of “Special Government Employee”—a classification with less stringent ethics requirements than those mandated for full-time federal workers—Musk joined the White House to lead DOGE with Russell Vought.
- Named after a meme-turned Musk favored cryptocurrency, DOGE was ostensibly supposed to improve bureaucratic efficiency, accountability, and transparency in government spending. Instead, Musk and Vought wielded the quasi-agency to “dismantle the essential functions of the federal government,” without regard for legal, political, or professional precedent.
- DOGE agents—largely recruited from Musk and Peter Thiel’s orbit—infiltrated the internal machinery of more than a dozen federal agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, U.S. Agency for International Development, Treasury Department, and Social Security Administration.
- Musk has been instrumental in the Trump administration’s purge of the federal workforce. To date, over 400,000 civil servants have left the government since January 2025.
- DOGE’s claims of generating over $200 billion dollars in federal savings have been contradicted by multiple reports of the quasi-agency inflating, rewriting, and overstating these savings. Musk himself has even admitted that the initiative was only “somewhat successful.”
- Musk left DOGE in May 2025, and by November of the same year the agency had been effectively disbanded.
- Since leaving government, Musk has avoided legal accountability for his role in DOGE. Texas constables, for example, have attempted to ask Musk deposition questions on fourteen separate occasions—only to be turned away or told that Musk wasn’t there each time.
- Despite claiming to “do a lot less” political spending following his time in government, Musk has continued financially backing Republicans heading into the 2026 midterm elections. In January 2026, Musk gave $10 million to support Kentucky’s Nate Morris.
What Does Elon Musk Have To Gain From The Trump Administration?
- With a longstanding history of corporate malfeasance across his various businesses, Musk’s White House position provided an opportunity to destroy the very agencies that regulated his behavior.
- DOGE-driven layoffs at the National Highway Traffic Safety Commission (NHTSA) were especially drastic among self-driving safety staff. Since 2021, NHTSA has opened multiple investigations into Tesla over the self-driving technology used in their vehicles.
- In 2022, Tesla was forced to recall nearly 60,000 vehicles after NHTSA regulators discovered that self-driving vehicles would roll-through stop signs—a feature that was illegal in nearly every state.
- Tesla faced 15 separate recalls (impacting nearly 3 million vehicles) due to NHTSA-identified safety concerns in 2024 alone.
- After announcing a deal with Visa to offer mobile payment services through his social media platform X.com, Musk used DOGE to effectively “delete” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—the independent agency with direct regulatory authority over such services.
For more information, see the Revolving Door Project’s Oligarchs in Trump World tracker.