Comment As an immigrant, Elon Musk is constitutionally barred from running for the American presidency. It’s a silly rule. (Why should an accident of birth determine one’s fitness for office?) But Musk, ever the innovator, appears to have found a shrewd way around it. For a relatively paltry sum—a reported $130 million in donations and other campaign expenditures, less than Jeff Bezos spent on the Washington Post—the world’s richest man purchased a controlling stake in a broke, aging, scandal-ridden former president. Then, with help from another of his investments, X, and with the unhinged relentlessness he brings to all of his ventures, Musk led the unlikely rehabilitation and return of Donald Trump. Now the question looms: What price will Musk exact for his investment? When it became clear on Tuesday that Trump was going to win, Musk tweeted an unsubtle hint: a picture of himself carrying a sink into the Oval Office, a reprise of the dad joke he made when he bought Twitter. I wonder if Trump noticed that his own orange mug was nowhere to be seen in Musk’s vision of the Oval Office. I sure did, and it chilled me even more than Trump’s victory itself. After all, what could be worse than an incompetent, narcissistic, megalomaniac billionaire taking control of the United States? Answer: a competent narcissistic, megalomaniac billionaire taking control of the United States. Philosophically and financially, Musk has much to gain from his new connection to the White House. His many businesses are huge beneficiaries of federal subsidies and the subject of many regulations. He opposes unions, pines for ever-lower taxes, and believes that federal agencies have too much power over corporations. Advertisement Throughout the campaign, both Musk and Trump suggested that Musk would be given carte blanche over the operations of the federal government, including running what they’re calling a Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, with a mandate to slash spending. Musk has floated the idea of cutting annual federal spending by $2 trillion, or nearly a third—an amount that would not be achievable without deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare, other welfare programs, and even national defense. Advertisement