Though Elon Musk may appear these days like your typical right-wing billionaire, that hasn’t always been the case.
The Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI CEO’s rightward lean is actually the culmination of a political evolution that’s been playing out over decades.
And as one of the richest and most powerful people in the world, Musk’s political stances carry a great weight.
Musk’s political donations dating back to 2002 fit neatly into just a single landing page on OpenSecrets, a nonprofit organization that tracks money in politics. And he’s contributed to both sides of the political aisle.
Though Musk historically hasn’t been big on political donations, he’s publicly said that he weighs in on politics when it could affect his businesses. And 2024 may have the biggest effect on Musk yet.
Ever since Trump left the White House, the billionaire has increasingly inserted himself into debates over hot button topics, waged a largely one-way feud with President Joe Biden, and cozied up to Donald Trump.
Here’s how Musk got here.
The early years: From apartheid-era South Africa to Tesla takeover
Musk, 52, has said very little publicly about apartheid, the system of racial segregation that became the defining issue of his childhood in the Republic of South Africa.
His father, Errol — who inherited wealth from half of an emerald mine he used to own — was elected to Pretoria City Council in 1972, running under the anti-apartheid Progressive Party. The apartheid system was a major motivation behind the younger Musk’s decision to leave South Africa for Canada in 1989, according to Ashlee Vance’s 2015 biography of the billionaire.
Growing up in the primarily white suburbs outside of Johannesburg, Musk was also surrounded by censorship and disinformation about the government’s treatment of Black people, The New York Times reported in May. His mandatory government service was what first exposed him to the reality of the situation, according to the Times, who spoke with a high school classmate of Musk’s about the insulated experience.
“People, at some point, realize that they’ve been fed a whole lot of crap,” Andrew Panzera, who was in Musk’s German class, told the Times. “At some point you go, ‘Jeepers, we really were indoctrinated to a large extent.'”
Musk’s political coming of age during the pre-social media era remains much of a mystery. But then his profile rose with the sale of his company X.com, a competitor to PayPal co-founded by Musk, and his subsequent takeover of Tesla as owner after joining founders Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning with a $6.5 million investment in 2004.
Musk’s politics pre-Trump
Musk has long argued for small government and advocated for laissez-faire economic policy, calling the US government the “ultimate corporation” at a CEO summit in December 2020. In terms of donations, he’s been in a relative holding pattern from his early years in Silicon Valley up to the present, donating moderate sums of money to politicians from both parties.
“I get involved in politics as little as possible,” Musk said at a 2015 Vanity Fair event, adding that, “There’s some amount I have to get involved in,” due to his business interests.
He donated $2,000 each to former President George W. Bush and his 2004 Democratic challenger, former Secretary of State John Kerry. Musk also donated to California Democrats up and down the ballot, but still gave the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) $25,000 ahead of the 2006 midterms.
Another example of Musk hedging his donations came in the buildup to the 2008 presidential primaries, where he contributed to both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in their contentious race.
Musk didn’t donate to either Clinton or Trump during the 2016 cycle.
The billionaire also started out as a heavy Trump skeptic, saying in October 2015 that it would be “embarrassing” if Trump won the GOP nomination, much less the presidency.
“I don’t really have strong feelings except that hopefully Trump doesn’t get the nomination of the Republican party, because I think that’s, yeah … that wouldn’t be good,” Musk said at the Vanity Fair event. “I think at most he would get the Republican nomination, but I think that would still be a bit embarrassing.”
But more recently, Musk has taken a different approach to the Trump-dominated GOP. His latest donations have all been to Republican candidates and causes, with Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware being the last Democrat to receive any Musk donations back in 2020.
Musk’s politics during Trump’s term
Starting in 2017, Musk’s donations began to skew Republican, with the billionaire spending nearly seven times more on GOP campaigns than Democratic ones. He also accepted positions on two of Trump’s White House councils and tweeted his support of Rex Tillerson’s nomination as Secretary of State.
While Musk previously said he supported Hillary Clinton’s campaign promises on the environment and climate change, he defended his decision to attend Trump’s business council meetings so he could raise the issue along with the January 2017 travel ban affecting Muslim-majority countries. He then stepped down from the councils in June 2017, citing Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Climate Accord.
“Climate change is real,” Musk tweeted. “Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”
Musk largely stopped mentioning Trump from that point until much later in his presidency, when Trump attended a SpaceX launch for NASA in May 2020.
Musk during Biden’s presidency
In the last few years, Musk’s flirtations with the Trump-led GOP have been ramping up.
In mid-2022, Musk said he voted for a Republican candidate for the first time in a Texas special election, adding that he expected to see a “massive red wave” in the year’s midterms. Musk’s Texas voter registration does not show party affiliation, but he’s argued on X that the Democratic Party has drifted further from the center than the GOP.
In the closest thing Musk has offered to a 2024 endorsement, he tweeted in June 2022 that he was leaning toward supporting Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president. DeSantis, who has since dropped out of the race, joked that he welcomed support from “African Americans,” referencing Musk being South African.
Musk also said in July 2022 that Trump shouldn’t run for president again and instead just “sail into the sunset.”
But the billionaire has since changed his tune.
After taking control of Twitter, now X, at the end of 2022, Musk reinstated Trump’s account on the platform. Musk called Trump’s expulsion from the platform following the January 6 riots a “morally bad decision” and “foolish to the extreme.”
Though Musk has not outright endorsed Trump for president, he appears to be getting close. Musk has repeatedly criticized Biden, calling the president a “damp sock puppet” last year and hosting an “anti-Biden brain trust” meeting with Republican billionaires this April.
Musk also recently had breakfast with Trump, along with Nelson Peltz, where the trio griped about voter fraud and Biden’s performance.
And, after Trump’s felony conviction last month, Musk went to bat for the MAGA leader.
“Indeed, great damage was done today to the public’s faith in the American legal system,” Musk wrote in a post on X.
“If a former President can be criminally convicted over such a trivial matter — motivated by politics, rather than justice — then anyone is at risk of a similar fate,” Musk added, echoing Trump’s own narrative that the conviction was an act of political persecution.
Trump has even been reportedly chatting up Musk about an advisory role in his cabinet if he wins this November. And that’s not the extent of the pair’s burgeoning chumminess — Musk said earlier this month that the former president sometimes calls him on the phone out of the blue.
While Musk has been more bullish lately about support for the GOP, his history of donations and past comments show that he has tended to position himself wherever he thinks power and influence are heading.
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