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Fueled by “duck and cover” drills that found children huddled under desks or in the halls at school, 20th century Americans were petrified of the Soviet Union, later retitled Russia. A brief hiatus occurred when Mikhail Gorbachev, whose policy of glasnost allowed freedom of expression and resulted in the abandonment of Marxist–Leninist ideology, came to power. But Vladimir Putin now serves as Russia’s president/dictator, and he’s perfected the machinery of electoral fraud, jailed political opponents, and surrounded himself with what The Conversation calls “mind-boggling wealth and power he has accumulated during his time as a public servant.”
Putin has become a role model for former US president Donald J. Trump, and recently it’s been unveiled that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022. The revelation came — of all places — from the Wall Street Journal (that bastion of everything conservative), which published an exclusive from Thomas Grove, Warren P. Strobel, Aruna Viswanatha, Gordon Lubold, and Sam Schechner. The piece outlines how the Musk–Putin conversations “touch on personal topics, business, and geopolitical tensions.”
Historian Heather Cox Richardson calls it “a bombshell story.”
It has not been a good week for Musk; his public profile has taken real hits. Many contradictions had already surrounded the paradoxical relationship of Musk and Trump, and, when you add Putin into the equation, the result is, as my mother would’ve said, a Mess.
Musk is an immigrant, a techno geek, an innovator, and a professed proponent of a zero emissions global future. Trump didn’t read daily CIA security briefs when he was in the Oval Office. Politico reminds us that, for as long as he has been in politics — in fact, for longer — “Trump has been a ruthlessly effective practitioner of the art of parroting others’ most provocative, salacious ideas.” Trump has stated and then walked back an assertion that climate change was a hoax invented by the Chinese to crash the US economy. Musk is truly one of the richest men in the world, while Trump’s financial woes are ever present and pressing. As the Atlantic chronicled, Trump needs huge amounts of liquid cash to cover his never-ending legal fees and judgments and to fund his campaign. He’s also reeling from the current weakness of the commercial real estate market.
A key to the conundrum may be one of fame. As Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) explains, Musk is “a bigger star than Trump. Endorsements, they’re really not meaningful often, but this one is, I think. That has me concerned.”
Musk is not alone in aligning himself with Trump. Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory points out that Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, too, has bowed to Trump in a “dark week” in which “Bezos is practicing what has become the gloomy watchword of an anxiety-ridden month: anticipatory obedience.”
But kissing up to Putin? Even Bezos has his limits.
Cox Richardson suggests that “Musk appears to be making a bid for control of the Republican Party” for a number of possible reasons, including so he can continue to score federal contracts.
Musk’s SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite system, won a $1.8 billion contract with US military and intelligence agencies in 2021. It is the major rocket launcher for NASA and the Pentagon, and Musk has a security clearance; he says it is a top-secret clearance. Nonetheless, on one occasion, the Russian president asked Musk not to activate his Starlink satellite service over Taiwan to help China’s leader, Xi Jinping, the WSJ reports.
Musk’s business ties with US intelligence and military agencies has given him “unique visibility into some of America’s most sensitive space programs,” the WSJ wrote, and he has access to certain classified information. NASA administrator Bill Nelson has called for an investigation into the story.
“If the story is true that there have been multiple conversations between Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then I think that would be concerning, particularly for NASA, for the Department of Defense, for some of the intelligence agencies.”
Trump’s own ties to Putin are under scrutiny after Bob Woodward reported that the former president had spoken to the Russian leader on multiple occasions since leaving office. The book, War, reveals new details about Trump’s private conversations with Putin. Woodward describes how the former president and current Republican nominee had spoken with Putin as many as seven times since leaving office in 2021, even as Trump was pressuring Republicans to block military aid to Ukraine to fight Russian invaders. The book also said that Trump sent Covid-19 testing equipment to Putin early in the pandemic for his personal use.
The Musk–Trump–Putin Magnetism
For much of his career, Musk gave modestly to candidates of both parties, as the New York Times outlines. He was drawn to President Barack Obama, making several visits to meet with him in the Oval Office and inviting him to Cape Canaveral to see SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. But Musk didn’t take to political life, instead focusing on his global business ventures.
Meanwhile, in 2021, Musk moved from California to Texas, surrounding himself with a more conservative social circle. Musk became enamored of the right-wing position that immigrants were flooding the US and jeopardizing the labor force.
Yet the Washington Post released an expose that documents how, “long before he became one of Donald Trump’s biggest donors and campaign surrogates, South African-born Elon Musk worked illegally in the United States as he launched his entrepreneurial career.” Musk held no legal right to work while building the company that became Zip2, which sold for about $300 million in 1999. Musk made more money from that and eventually rolled that money into the company that would become Tesla, as well as into other ventures — and the Post notes that Musk is “arguably America’s most successful immigrant.”
As new donors started gravitating toward Trump, he began making new promises on the campaign trail. “Biden and Harris are not purchasable, and Trump is the most purchasable president in our lifetime,” says Reid Hoffman, one of PayPal’s early employees (Musk made a fortune selling his share of PayPal to eBay). Hoffman is a prominent Democratic donor.
Musk, of course, is the social media platform X’s most powerful driver of pro-Trump content. He has full decision-making over what content is allowed on the site. On July 26, he reposted a deepfake video of Harris — in an apparent violation of X’s manipulated-media policy — in which a phony voiceover claims, “I was selected because I am the ultimate diversity hire.”
Trump has suggested that Musk could be part of his administration to lead a “government efficiency commission.” Musk’s companies are currently under at least 20 federal investigations and inquiries by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the SEC, and other agencies.
Earlier this month, Musk solicited personal identifying information for a petition on his PAC’s website, offering $47 to anyone who referred a signatory in a swing state. US federal law prohibits groups and individuals from bribing people to register to vote. The pro-Trump political group awarded two additional $1 million prizes to swing-state voters Thursday night, despite warnings from the Justice Department that the daily giveaways could violate election laws.
We’ll see if there is any substantive change in his demeanor after November 5th — fingers crossed, on so many levels.
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