This Bromance of Donald-Elon is Due to Failure

 

A photo that is largely dark except for a spotlight on Elon Musk’s face and hands. He holds the microphone with his left hand, and makes a flippant gesture with his right. He wears a silly expression.

Credit...Samuel Corum/Getty Images

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By David Nasaw

 Mr. Nasaw is the author of biographies of William Randolph Hearst, Andrew Carnegie and Joseph P. Kennedy.

The New York Times

~So sORRy~ ☺️Elon, but the bromance is not going to last. I know the president-elect put you on the phone with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine the night after the election. And I know that in Donald Trump’s victory speech, after obligatory but abbreviated nods to his “beautiful wife,” his “amazing children” and his “feisty” vice president-elect, he celebrated your super-genius as only he could, in a disjointed, discombobulated, wildly overextended paean and declaration of love. “Oh, let me tell you, we have a new star,” he said. “A star 😉is born, Elon.”

Yet therein lies your problem, Mr. Musk. There’s room for only one star, one genius in the Trump White House. As the president-elect has told us time and again, he is one smart fellow and a “very stable genius.” Trump is not going to share his victory and center stage with anyone. And why should he? What more would you have to offer, having spent in excess of $100 million to help secure his election?

Mr. Trump may be mercurial, but in this situation he is highly unlikely to break historical precedent. I predict that you will probably join the long list of genius businessmen donors who were casually discarded after they had served their purpose.

Andrew Carnegie, who was at the time, just like you, the richest man in the world, was a stalwart and generous contributor to the Republican presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Carnegie naturally assumed that he would, in return for his support and in recognition of his genius and one-on-one relationships with Europe’s elected leaders and crowned heads, be called upon as chief foreign policy adviser when Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1901, after McKinley’s assassination. As such, he bombarded the White House with his recommendations for arbitration treaties between the major powers, which he believed would usher in a century of peace. His advice was dutifully acknowledged by Roosevelt — then ignored. 

And William Randolph Hearst? Mr. Musk, you’ve got your millions of social-media followers, but your outreach still pales in comparison with Hearst in his heyday: 28 big-city newspapers, a syndicated wire service, radio stations, newsreels and 13 magazines. Hearst’s contributions to Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign were, like yours to Mr. Trump’s, extensive and varied. In addition to huge financial assistance, Hearst used his media empire to conduct virulent and near-daily assaults on the incumbent, Herbert Hoover.

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The day after the election, Hearst’s wife, Millicent, telegrammed to say that she “had seen Roosevelt last night. He said he was going to telephone you. You are getting all the credit for this victory from everybody I meet.” Hearst responded by forwarding his recommendations for cabinet appointments and an 11-point recovery plan, only to be ghosted by the president-elect: no letters, no telegrams, no phone calls. Almost two months later, Roosevelt finally issued an invitation to Hearst to visit him for private talks. The publisher declined, later producing a feature-length film, based on a novel, in which a guardian angel instructs a weak and unprepared president.

Then there’s Joseph Kennedy, a multimillionaire who connected candidate Roosevelt to Hearst, as well as to Hollywood’s most powerful tycoons and to Irish American voters. Identified by The New York Times as a key adviser, Kennedy fully expected to be rewarded with a cabinet post, preferably Treasury secretary. Instead, he wound up commiserating with Hearst over being ghosted by the president-elect. Only in June of 1934, more than a year and a half after the election, did Roosevelt finally offer Kennedy a place in his administration — though not in his cabinet, but as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Carnegie, Hearst and Kennedy refrained from making demands on their candidates during the campaign. But you let Mr. Trump know early what you expected, Mr. Musk. In a glitchy livestream conversation on X in August, you interrupted his rambling monologue three times to recommend he reduce inflation by creating a “government efficiency commission,” which you would head. Do you really believe he is going to give you that? This is not a man for whom loyalty is a strong suit. As president, he parted ways with his chief of staff, his deputy chief of staff, his press secretary, his national security adviser and his chief strategist. And that was just in his first year in office.

I’m not sure what you were thinking — or if you were thinking — when you clambered on that Madison Square Garden stage and claimed that as chief of the Department of Government Efficiency (a cringingly inappropriate shout-out to DOGE, your favored cryptocurrency) you would cut at least $2 trillion of government spending. The results of such a gutting would, even conservative think-tank analysts predicted, be catastrophic. It is nearly impossible to imagine a majority of Republican lawmakers endorsing your plans to slash a third of all federal spending. To do so would be political suicide. Perhaps that’s part of the reason Howard Lutnick, a co-chairman of Trump’s transition team, recently explained that you were “not coming into the government” but would assist the new administration … by writing software. 

No matter. Your $44 billion purchase of Twitter, which you weaponized as a Trump campaign megaphone, and the many millions more you spent getting out the vote for your candidate were worthy investments. Tesla stock, the source of your wealth, is soaring, and both Tesla and SpaceX, which have already received $15.4 billion in federal grants, will likely continue to be showered in government dollars.

Even more important, you and your companies will probably be left alone under Trump rule to do as you please. For the next few years nobody will pester you about where you deploy your Starlink internet satellites, and no allegations will be made about potential stock or crypto manipulations. No worries about doing business with Russia or flooding X with political misinformation. No irritating crash investigations of Tesla’s self-driving cars, either.

You and your Silicon Valley buddies can anticipate a profitable future in which the federal government acts as a silent, passive paymaster, doling out billions of dollars, then looking the other way as they are spent. The combination of a transactional president and an eccentric billionaire means you will get to be an official adviser or unofficial whisperer while also being the recipient of government largess.

Whatever your future role in the Trump administration, Mr. Musk, you can bask in the glory of being publicly proclaimed a super-genius by none other than the president-elect of the United States. You can don that white tie and attend fancy dinners honoring the foreign leaders you both admire; grab some real photo-ops and manufacture more; and, for as long as it lasts, enjoy another moment in the limelight, this time as the kingmaker who was adopted by the royal family.

As insurance against being prematurely discarded, you can, as you’ve already announced, continue to stay involved in politics with your well-funded political action committee poised to “weigh in heavily” in the midterms and thereafter. Perhaps even you see the writing on the wall.