All eyes should have been on the sky over a launchpad in Texas on Tuesday as the world’s largest rocket streaked thunderously toward space.
But the orbit currently getting the most attention is not in the heavens — it’s the increasingly intimate one back on Earth uniting the planet’s soon-to-be-again most powerful man and its richest man.
President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk — after trips to see Republicans in Washington and an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in New York, including a mid-flight McDonald’s with a grimacing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — took to the road again to watch Musk’s SpaceX Starship rocket blast off on its latest test flight.
For once, Trump’s hyperbole wasn’t over the top. “I’m heading to the Great State of Texas to watch the launch of the largest object ever to be elevated, not only to Space, but simply by lifting off the ground,” he wrote on social media.
Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX visionary, has spent the last two weeks basking in Trump’s reflected glory at Mar-a-Lago. He’s around so much it’s almost like he’s family, and he even made it into a photo of Trump’s extended clan. Now, it was time for him to share some of his own aura with his new best friend.
Trump, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed against the glare and sporting a red MAGA hat bearing a “45” and a “47,” struck a Mount Rushmore pose, certainly aware of television split screens that would pair him alongside the rocket’s takeoff burn. He looked almost if he was claiming some of the credit for himself.
In the nervous moments before the launch, various lesser satellites revolved around Trump, including his son Donald Jr., Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician. But the president-elect seemed most animated when Musk appeared and explained what would unfold when the rocket took off.
A bit of a disappointment
In the event, Trump didn’t get to see the ballistic ballet of SpaceX returning its massive booster to be clutched by a state-of-the-art launchpad that he raved about on the campaign trail. “I see that fire pouring out the bottom of the rocket that’s coming in sideways and I say, ‘it’s going to crash into the gantry,’” Trump said earlier this month. “And those two big beautiful arms they grab it — I said, ‘What the hell was that?’”
On Tuesday, mission controllers made a split-second decision instead to ditch the giant Roman candle-like vehicle in the Gulf of Mexico after its slow-motion descent. “Maybe they just want to be careful not to kill the president-elect of the United States by any chance,” Greg Autry, associate provost for space commercialization and strategy at the University of Central Florida, told CNN.
But the stunning spectacle of the Starship roaring off the launchpad and its flight around the globe in a matter of minutes to delicately splash down, feet first, in the Indian Ocean, was testimony to the genius of Musk, who revolutionized the space industry, revived the US-manned spaceflight program, and is on course to return humans to the moon — and eventually Mars.
It explains why Trump wants Musk alongside him. If he can disrupt the aerospace sector, at the same time as reinventing the electric vehicle business, what might Musk do with his new Department of Government Efficiency, which Trump has tapped him and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead? Trump believes he has a mandate to blow up the federal bureaucracy like one of the prototype rockets his new friend used to supercharge progress in his space program.
But the president-elect’s presence at the Starship launch and his anointing of Musk with his approval also point to the huge problem with their tie-up.
The South African-born billionaire now has a massive role in space exploration, US national security and the electric vehicle industry. And Trump can grant Musk extraordinary favors. Musk, armed with the authority of the president in his new role as scourge of government, may even be able to wipe out regulations that hinder his business and profit from tilting the marketplace.
Conflicts of interest weren’t exactly taken seriously in the first Trump administration. But Musk’s ubiquity in Trump 2.0 as the standout ally in an emerging inner circle of billionaires, millionaires and Fox News anchors means they have officially become a joke.
Why Trump likes Musk
It’s not rocket science why Trump likes Musk. He’s dynamic and a certifiable genius. The president-elect also likes the ego boost of being courted by the world’s wealthiest human — especially one who spent millions of dollars to get him elected and turned X into a free-for-all that mirrors Trump’s conspiratorial worldview and has immense power to influence vast numbers of voters.
In many ways, Musk is a far more successful version of Trump himself. He tears things down before building them back up, had multiple marriages and was shaped by a domineering father who left a mark on his psyche. It’s not often that Trump, who seeks to dominate every room and relationship, seems impressed about something other than himself. But his fan boy appreciation for Musk’s rocketry seems perfectly genuine.
Still, it’s about more than money and space dreams.
By palling around with Musk, the 78-year-old Trump secured an entry into a young, male subculture where the Tesla pioneer is seen as an icon. Their friendship also bought Trump credibility among other opinion formers that reach this demographic, which was evident in his appearances on YouTube shows and podcasts with Joe Rogan, the Nelk Boys, Theo Von and Barstool Sports.
All of this helped improve Trump’s standing in the election with young, male voters — a constituency that Democrats are struggling to reach. Trump has rarely seemed as at ease or authentic as he does in these venues, talking with authority about wrestling, football and conspiracy theories. One of the most remarkable moments came on Von’s show when Trump became unusually animated in asking his host about his past cocaine use.
Trump’s growing cultural clout
Trump’s visit to Musk’s launchpad was also the latest occasion since the election when he has inserted himself into high-profile photo-ops. The image reflects the developing reality that Trump, who’s always been an icon in the UFC and reality TV worlds, is indisputably becoming a cultural figure as well as a political one.
The UFC’s smash mouth image explains a lot of Trump’s political style. And now a Trump dance is going viral.
His political opponents saw his strange jiggling on stage at his rallies as a sign of fraying cognitive health. His supporters perceived humor and self-deprecation. Now the president-elect’s two-fisted shimmy is being adopted by athletes in major league sports, who boogie Trump-style to celebrate big-fight wins, touchdowns and goals. This is heady stuff for a Republican Party that has for years struggled to match Democrats when it comes to big-time celebrity support.
But something more sinister is also at play. Trump is sanding down the roughest edges of an extreme image that was cemented by the darkest closing argument of any presidential candidate in modern history.
The president-elect, who dances on state to the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.,” is the same one who promises mass deportations of undocumented migrants, who tried to steal the 2020 election after lying about the result, who is a convicted felon, and who appears set on wielding uncheckable power after January 20. It’s long been a tactic of authoritarians to soften their images with antics and stunts that further their personality cults and disguise their more nefarious goals. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, at moments when he wants to be seen as the father of the nation, often attends televised rocket launches.
How long can it last?
As well as “Y.M.C.A.,” another one of the MAGA campaign trail soundtrack staples is “Rocket Man” by Elton John, which is about an astronaut “burning out his fuse” Trump-style as he flies alone through space. The hit perhaps reflects Trump’s starry-eyed infatuation with Musk’s amazing array of spaceships and limitless ambition.
But despite their budding friendship, it’s becoming fashionable to speculate when the big Trump-Musk bromance might itself blow up — given that both men are abrasive, need to be the stars in their own firmaments and appear to find close friendships difficult.
With Musk, Trump might get more than he bargained for.
He may not, for instance, be willing pay the political price of mass layoffs among federal workers, loss of productivity and the failure of government programs that Musk might cause with savage cuts recommended by the new DOGE.
And Trump’s recent quips that he can’t get rid of Musk from Mar-a-Lago have been interpreted by some as a sign that his welcome is wearing thin.
“You can only ultimately have one star of the show and that star of the show is going to be Donald Trump,” former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday. But he also argued that Musk is brilliant, innovative and inventive and was fully on brand for the president-elect. “Trump campaigned on the notion that we are going to break the mold,” he said.
When Trump is inaugurated for a second time as president of the United States, there will be no mistaking who is the senior partner — even if Musk wields vast non-state power through his wealth and business ventures that penetrate deep into the economies of nations all over the world.
Musk is also becoming a force multiplier for Trump — another reason to keep him around. The president-elect put him on a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after the election. (Musk controls the Starlink internet service that is vital to Ukraine’s military in the war with Russia that Trump has pledged to end). And French President Emmanuel Macron, an astute student of the art of Trump flattery, plans to invite the 47th president and Musk to an AI summit in Paris in February.
Trump spent the early months of his first term taunting North Korean leader Kim as “little rocket man” for his proclivity to shoot off missiles every time he believed his pariah state wasn’t getting attention.
The hostility soon wore off and Trump has often talked about how they “fell in love” — although their photo-op summits did little to reverse Pyongyang’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs. It’s too early to say whether the Kim and Trump bromance will resume in the next president’s second term.
And in any case, Trump has got a new rocket man.