Elon Musk has become a valuable shield for a president who avoids blame at all costs.
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Elon Musk has become a vital component of both President Trump's political operations and the broader Republican Party apparatus.
Elon Musk became the face of a humiliating political defeat in Wisconsin on Tuesday night, slamming cabinet members and alienating several advisers close to President Trump. Republican lawmakers faced angry questions about Mr. Musk’s influence from their constituents as they returned to their districts.
It will be a relief to many around Mr. Trump when Mr. Musk completes his 130-day tour of duty as a special government employee, which under federal law is set to end in late May or early June.
But the president has no plans to sever ties with the world's richest man even after he leaves government, according to two people familiar with the president's thinking.
Mr. Musk has become, for better or worse, an integral part of both Mr. Trump’s political operation and the broader Republican Party apparatus. He is a party financier who has given $100 million to Mr. Trump’s outside groups, on top of the nearly $300 million he spent on the 2024 election. And he controls the most important media outlet in Republican politics — the website X, formerly known as Twitter — making Republicans wary of getting on his bad side.
At a closed-door JP Morgan conference last week in Montana, investor Michael Kives asked Mr. Musk how long he thought his “brotherhood” with Mr. Trump would last, according to a person in the room. Mr. Musk, speaking via Zoom to a group that included foes like Sam Altman and Reid Hoffman and allies like Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, said he would be done with most of his work in “three to four months.”
Mr. Trump genuinely likes Mr. Musk, according to people who have observed their private interactions and discussed their relationship with the president. Mr. Trump has also foreshadowed Mr. Musk’s departure in the past two weeks, publicly saying he expected Mr. Musk to leave the government “at some point” to return to his companies and privately telling Cabinet officials on March 24 that they had little time to do anything given Mr. Musk’s stature.
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