STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President-elect Trump may not be the richest man in his administration. Trump talked of a post for Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX. Musk was one of Trump's main campaign contributors and also used X, the social media site, to promote him. Now Musk is close to the future leader of a government with which he does a lot of business. Ronan Farrow wrote in The New Yorker of Musk's Defense Department and NASA contracts worth billions of dollars.
RONAN FARROW: Elon Musk has become this indispensable figure across the U.S. government. And there are certain services he can provide, like his Starlink satellite services, like certain space shuttle abilities to bring astronauts into space. There aren't a lot of valid competitors when the government is looking at companies to bid. And by the way, this manifests everywhere from the war in Ukraine, where he was providing through his Starlink services essential internet access for the Ukrainians, and that became strategically important.
INSKEEP: ...And turned out to have opinions about the war.
FARROW: Yeah. Well, exactly so. You know, he was providing internet services and then curtailing it in certain ways. And there were these questions of, is that because he's loyal to Putin? So this is a person who just has immense sway really to a kind of unprecedented extent, according to historians I talked to who kind of track the role of business titans in American politics over the years.
INSKEEP: I want to emphasize why you think that is. Because the United States government is paying the bills, you could imagine with a contractor that that gives the government influence over the contractor. But you're telling me that because his services are so scarce, he is the one with the power in that relationship.
FARROW: That's right. That was the surprising thing that I found when I dug into these government relationships and talked to some of the government officials who are on the other end of those conversations - that they often felt very cowed and very subject to his whims.
INSKEEP: What did he do to help elect Donald Trump?
FARROW: He spent a really tremendous amount of money through his PAC to try to get Donald Trump elected. He's one of the founders of the America PAC, which has spent over $175 million. One hundred thirty-plus of that really came out of Musk's pocket. He controversially awarded a million-dollar reward to someone who would register to vote. So he's really been going all out to get this man elected. And to wit, Elon Musk spent election night at Mar-a-Lago with Trump.
INSKEEP: So what can a president do for you when you're already the world's richest man, and it seems you have a dominant position over the U.S. government in your chosen fields anyway?
FARROW: Well, Trump said he would appoint Musk to a government efficiency coalition, and the way he described that was that Elon Musk would be auditing the entire federal government. And Musk has now talked about that evolving into something called the Department of Government Efficiency. And the Trump team has hedged a little on what that's going to look like. Is it going to actually happen? How robust is that role going to be? But I think that's why it's important that we're talking about it now, because it truly would be unprecedented and troubling to have someone who has this many national security-sensitive relationships with the government in a role of potentially explicit oversight over the budgets of those same government agencies.
INSKEEP: I'm still trying to figure out what would be in it for Musk. That sounds like a lot of work to cut trillions of dollars of federal government spending, which other people have tried to do and failed. Like, what does he get?
FARROW: Well, this is a longer conversation, and there's certainly an ideological component. However, it's important to note that this is not only a person who has active business relationships with the government that could stand to benefit from him being in the government if he doesn't recuse himself in proper ways. He's also a person who's under active investigation by the government. The Department of Justice and the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency both have investigations into his auto company, Tesla. They're looking into deaths associated with crashes in Tesla vehicles that had that technology in them. And so we see in that a mirror image of Donald Trump, who is also an individual who's under a lot of investigation and for whom getting into government is a potential lifeline and a way out of those sources of scrutiny.
INSKEEP: I'm just thinking through. People used to doubt if Trump was a billionaire, but I suppose with his social media stock, you can say that he's a billionaire for sure now. You've got Elon Musk, who's a many, many billionaire. You've got John Paulson, a billionaire who has been talked about for a cabinet position. You have other people out there who have supported his side of the argument, people like Bill Ackman. Are we heading for a government of billionaires here?
FARROW: Yeah. I mean, this is an observation that I got from a lot of those historians I talked to, because I was so interested by this imbalance of power that I saw in Musk's relationship with the government. A lot of those experts who have looked at the historical arc of this talked about us entering into an era of oligarchy in the United States.
INSKEEP: Ronan Farrow, it's a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much.
FARROW: Always a pleasure. Thank you.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
NPR reached out to the Trump team for comment on any conflict-of-interest protocols for Elon Musk's potential government role. We don't yet have a response. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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