Sloth Blog

By D. Allan Kerr

Now we understand why super-billionaire Elon Musk was pogoing on stage at that Donald Trump rally back in October.

Musk, already the richest man on the planet before the 2024 election, has practically doubled his wealth since. In the year ahead, you’ll likely see him emerge as the most powerful person in the world.

And it stems from a roughly $250 million investment in Trump’s presidential campaign, which might seem a lot to you and me but isn’t a second thought to a man worth more than $450 billion.

Think about this: A guy whose companies bring in billions of dollars thru federal government contracts will soon have a leading role in dictating how federal government funding should be spent.

His SpaceX aerospace technology company alone already has received more than $19 billion in government contracts, according to CNBC. Jared Isaacman, Trump’s pick to head NASA, is a billionaire Space X investor who has twice flown in SpaceX vehicles, once as a flight commander.

Musk has been tapped as co-chief of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, with the goal of slashing wasteful government spending. You might think a good starting point would be elimination of the duplicative U.S. Space Force, but given his deep financial ties to our newest military branch, I don’t foresee Musk moving in that direction.

Apparently, DOGE will be a sort of advisory panel rather than an institutional government agency, which means Musk will not have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Since he will be neither a federal appointee nor an employee, you have to wonder if he’ll be held accountable for any potential conflict-of-interest actions in his new capacity.

Outgoing New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu claims Musk is essentially immune to such base desires.

“He doesn’t need the dollars,” Sununu recently told CNN’s State of the Union. “He’s so rich, he’s so removed from the potential financial influence of it.”

Yeah, ok.

Trump was only too happy to bring the Tesla chief’s cash and prestige into his orbit during the campaign, and now into his administration, as well. Musk already has emerged as a leader – some say THE leader – of an incoming team shaping up to be a Billionaire Bullies Club.

Before his good friend Trump even has taken office, folks are half-jokingly referring to the mega-wealthy entrepreneur as “President Musk,” and some GOP players floated the idea of the South African native stepping up as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Musk has  threatened to fund primary opponents to Republican lawmakers who don’t go along with the incoming White House agenda, and when you consider not only his massive fortune but also his ownership of the social media platform I still call Twitter, and his deep-pocketed political action committee America PAC, that’s not an idle challenge.

Musk notoriously encouraged a government shutdown in December, almost singlehandedly swaying Republican House members thru a series of posts to kill a federal funding bill on the brink of passage. Trump joined the bandwagon shortly afterward.

Now Musk and his co-head of DOGE, Vivek Ramaswamy, are clashing with Republican hardliners over their proposed expansion of H1-B visas for skilled foreign workers such as engineers, and Trump is once again following suit.

Campaigning for his first term back in 2016, Trump called the program “very very bad” for American workers and proclaimed “we should end it,” even though he’s been hiring foreign employees thru this and similar programs for years. He recently flip-flopped yet again and sided with Musk over long-term MAGA relics embracing the America First agenda.

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties,” Trump acknowledged. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”

In fact, according to a recent Vanity Fair article, over the past 20 years, Trump’s companies have employed over 1,000 workers through H-2 visas, which are used to bring in agricultural and domestic workers such as cooks and housekeepers.

So much for adhering to his own America First doctrine.

I really didn’t know much of anything about Musk until a few months ago, to the point I thought he actually invented the Tesla automotive models when in fact he was just an early investor who wound up taking over the whole show. (Perhaps a foreshadowing of what’s happening now.)

I just knew him as the rich guy who bought Twitter, posted a creepy proposition on social media about impregnating Taylor Swift and wussed out of a scheduled cage match with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg last year.

Now, after shares in his companies have taken off in recent weeks, Musk is the wealthiest human being who ever has walked the Earth.

Historically that title was held by the 14th-century Mali ruler Mansa Musa, whose personal fortune has been estimated at $400 billion by today’s numbers.

The Bloomberg Billionaire Index recently listed the wealth of Musk as more than $450 billion, making him nearly 70 times richer than Trump, which has to grate on someone who bases everything on material worth.

I’ve been telling folks this for weeks, but I want to be on the record to claim credit when it happens:

Trump may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but given his well-documented insecurity and ego, at some point in the months ahead he’ll realize he is being eclipsed by his former sidekick. At some point they are going to turn on each other and Musk either will quit or be fired from his advisory post.

Given his insane wealth and immense social media presence of roughly 200 million followers, Musk won’t fade quietly into the shadows like past Trump victims. Eventually there is going to be a feud between this pair of billion-dollar whackjobs, and it’s going to get ugly.

D. Allan Kerr believes Washington, D.C., could use more of Jimmy Carter’s class and integrity right now.

Follow D. Allan Kerr on Seacoastonline.com, Facebook and the Sloth Blog Threads and Twitter (yeah, we’re still calling it Twitter.)