WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump headed to Brownsville, Texas, on Tuesday to watch one of Elon Musk’s companies test its Starship rocket, the latest sign of a deepening bond between the president-elect and the world’s richest man.
Ever since Musk went camping at Mar-a-Lago after the election, there has been speculation about when Trump would get tired of hanging around and giving him advice on running the country.
But Tuesday’s outing was a remarkable show of intimacy between the two, with implications for American politics, the American government, foreign policy and even the possibility of humans reaching Mars.
Musk has spent about $200 million to help Trump defeat Democrat Kamala Harris in the presidential race, and he has been given unprecedented access. He advised Trump on nominees for the new administration, took part in the president-elect’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and was asked to co-chair an advisory panel on reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy.
Musk could also benefit personally. SpaceX, its rocket company, has billions of dollars in government contracts and aims to eventually establish a colony on Mars. He is also CEO of Tesla, which makes electric vehicles, and has battled regulators over safety concerns related to autonomous driving.
“Trump has the utmost appreciation for people who break the rules and get away with it,” said William Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. “Musk has made extraordinary achievements in this area. That.”
To top it all off, Musk owns the social media company X, formally known as Twitter, which he has used as a position of influence to promote Trump and his agenda.
“Stop the swamp!” he wrote Tuesday as he shared a warning that entrenched Washington interests are trying to undermine Trump before his inauguration.
Before the election, Musk dismissed the idea that he expected any favors in return for his support of Trump in the presidential race.
“There is no quid pro quo” he posted on X in September. “With a Trump administration, we can implement major government reforms, remove the bureaucratic paperwork that is choking the country and unleash a new era of prosperity.”
However, Trump hasn’t gone anywhere without Musk in the two weeks since he defeated Harris. Musk accompanied Trump to a meeting with House Republicans in Washington and sat next to him at an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in New York. The trip to Texas for the rocket launch will be the third time outside Florida since the election for Trump.
Much of Trump’s activities take place with little public access to the press. Unlike his predecessors, he has chosen not to regularly open up his travel plans or events to journalists.
The relationship between Trump and Musk was not always so close.
Two years ago, Trump mocked Musk in stump speeches and Musk said it was time for Trump to “hang his hat and sail off into the sunset.”
“Trump would be 82 at the end of his term, which is too old to be CEO of anything, let alone the United States of America,” Musk wrote on social media.
But Musk quickly backed Trump after the former president survived an assassination attempt in July. He quickly became a central figure in Trump’s inner circle, sometimes looking more like his running mate than Ohio Senator JD Vance.
Trump began bragging about Musk’s achievements at campaign rallies, such as when Starship’s reusable rocket booster returned to the launch tower and was captured by mechanical weapons.
“Those arms grab him like you grab your baby, just like you grab your little baby. And it hugged it and just put it down, and there it was,” Trump said.
Musk was with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort on election night and has spent much of the two weeks since. Trump’s granddaughter Kai Trump posted a photo of her with Musk at one of Trump’s golf resorts and wrote that Musk was “reaching uncle status.”
Last week, Musk appeared in a golden ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, sitting in the center of the room as the guest of honor at an event. Trump said in his remarks at the black tie event that Musk’s IQ is “about as high as they can get” and praised him as “a really good guy.”
“Three weeks ago he launched a rocket and then he went to Pennsylvania to campaign because he thought this was more important than launching rockets that cost billions of dollars,” Trump said.
He joked about Musk’s constant presence at Mar-a-Lago, saying, “He loves this place. I can’t get him out of here.”
He added, “And you know what, I like having him here.”
Musk was so praised by Trump’s audience that he was invited to speak on stage at the post-Trump event, speaking about the newly elected president’s victory as if he were his running mate.
“The public has given us a mandate that couldn’t be clearer,” Musk said of the election results.
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Price reported from New York.
