Elon Musk, the crazy political bet of the richest man in the world

It was one of the craziest bets in recent economic and political history, and it paid off: Elon Musk, a wealthy entrepreneur and megalomaniac, saw his fierce support for Donald Trump rewarded with a position as minister of Government Effectiveness.” The president-elect announced that he intended to appoint the boss of Tesla, Space X and X, jointly with Republican businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, to this brand new ministry. Its mission: “to send shock waves through the system” by deregulating at all costs and making drastic cuts in the federal budget. A “ranking of the most terribly stupid expenses” will be published, which “will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining,” Mr. Musk announced on X after the announcement of his future appointment.

It remains to be seen how two notoriously self-centered figures such as Elon Musk and Donald

Trump will get along in the long term.

Born on June 28, 1971 in South Africa to an engineer father and a Canadian model, the richest man in the world – a naturalized American – has become the most controversial figure of neocapitalism. He shares his extraplanetary ambitions and his techno-ideas

libertarians with more than 200 million subscribers on the platform that he bought in 2022, changing its name from “Twitter” to “X”.

Elon Musk, 53, has thrown himself headlong into Donald Trump’s campaign in recent weeks. Images of the multi-billionaire – Forbes estimates his fortune at more than $300 billion – jumping on stage during a Republican rally in Pennsylvania went around the world.

Other planets

His support committee organized a lottery offering a million dollars daily to registered voters in key states who agreed to sign a conservative petition in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms. He invested more than $100 million in the president-elect’s campaign, and used his social network, on which he posts continuously, as a sounding board.

So here he is, a minister, in addition to being at the head of Tesla, the world’s leading manufacturer of electric vehicles, and SpaceX, his space company.

Elon Musk is leading various other projects that illustrate his techno-vision

futuristic vision of a humanity augmented by science, destined to prosper on other planets. Among these projects: Neuralink, a start-up which aims to directly connect the human brain to the computer.

Megalomaniac, workaholic, the serial entrepreneur has always cultivated an image of a rebellious boss, fond of provocations, anti-politically correct.

A millionaire before the age of 30 after reselling an online software publisher that he had set up with his brother, Elon Musk subsequently founded X.com, which was merged with PayPal, then bought by eBay in 2002.

Super genius

His libertarian, openly masculinist line and his virulent criticism of immigration have made him increasingly popular on the American right. To the point of seducing, therefore, Donald Trump, who called him a “super genius” in his victory speech.

Elon Musk also has a taste for conspiracy theories: for example, he claimed this year that the Democratic Party was “deliberately importing illegal immigrants” to increase its electoral base.

In July, he announced with a bang that he was going to move the headquarters of SpaceX and progressive policies. Tesla’s headquarters had already moved there in 2021.

On interesting” a theory according to which only “dominant males” should make political decisions.

In May 2021, he revealed that he had Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. More recently, he said he took ketamine, a powerful anesthetic sometimes misused for stimulant or euphoric purposes, to treat a tendency toward depression.

Divorced three times, Elon Musk is the father of ten children, one of whom died at 10 weeks. One of them, a transgender girl, filed an official request to change her last name along with her gender in order to cut all ties with her father.

Aurelia END/AFP