‘President Musk’ May Copy William Randolph Hearst And Push The Nation to War
There are 335,000,000,000 reasons why Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet and the owner of X (formerly Twitter), Tesla, and Space X can regularly overshadow trump in the daily news roundups and still be on the trump team.
Anyone not named Elon Musk would have found himself quickly exiled into footnote purgatory with trump’s footprint on his butt. Musk has been THE story in national media, often crowding out trump’s most outlandish rubbish, like making Canada the 51st state and demanding Panama return the canal to the U.S.
Musk, who has practically become trump’s roommate at the Mar-a-Lago castle, has been referred to by his critics as “President Musk” as his influence keeps growing exponentially since he spent at least $250 million to elect trump. Trump has been busy assembling his oligarchy while he hasn’t even assumed the presidency. Already his alter-ego, Musk, is joining in the chaos.
Musk has assumed the mantle of trump’s premier wrecking ball, leaving Vice President JD Vance somewhere in the dust.
In his first big test, Musk led an unsuccessful effort to convince members of congress to defeat a government funding bill that did not meet with trump’s satisfaction. Musk threatened to fund primary election challenges for any lawmaker who did not get in the trump line, even if it meant closing down the government and withholding pay to millions of federal workers.
Musk tried to muscle lawmakers into submission by spreading lies on X, including claims that the bill included a 40 percent pay increase for Congress (it didn’t but did include cost-of-living adjustment of no more than 3.8 percent); a $3 billion giveaway for an NFL stadium in D.C. (the bill included no money for the stadium); an “outrageous” provision blocking a probe of the Jan. 6 investigative committee; and another provision “funding bioweapon labs” (neither which were true).
And Musk has not been satisfied with influencing the U.S. as he has become increasingly involved in funding the internal politics of countries like Germany and Great Britain.
Musk has been a constant at trump’s elbow as they met with foreign leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron at the ceremonial reopening of Notre Dame and the far right wing, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in New York. Musk called Meloni a “precious genius” and “even more beautiful on the inside than she is on the outside.”
Musk also was on the line during trump’s first call after the election with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He also has been in close touch and has had personal and private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Musk is the 21st century’s version of the 19th century newspaper baron and yellow journalist William Randolph Hearst. Like Hearst, Musk may one day provoke a world war to benefit his riches.
In 1898, tensions were rising between the U.S. and Spain over Spain’s colonization of Cuba. The tensions would eventually lead to the Spanish-American War. Spain declared war against America on April 24, 1898. President William McKinley reciprocated by declaring war against Spain on April 25.
Hearst famously announced in bold headlines in his papers, “You provide the pictures, I’ll provide the war.” Perhaps Musk will one day offer, “you provide the clicks, I’ll provide the war” while he stirs up the war drums in advance of World War III.
Hearst used his newspaper chain to spread rumors and lies to influence President William McKinley to invade Cuba and start the brief, but historic, Spanish-American War. At the time of the war, Hearst’s publications reached a peak circulation of 20 million readers a day, more than enough to influence U.S. foreign policy. The Hearst circulation was tiny compared to Musk’s “X,” formerly Twitter, which has more than 500 million monthly active users in 2024.
Relations bottomed out between the U.S. and Spain when on February 15, 1898, the USS Maine sunk in Havana harbor. Initial reports concluded the explosion was caused to an on-board malfunction but Hearst fed anti-Spanish public opinion by publishing rumors of plots to sink the ship.
Hearst played a huge part in arousing the public’s demands to go to war with Spain. The call for war reached its zenith after several years of articles over the situation in Cuba, including a series of rumors blaming the Spanish for the sinking of the Maine with a mine. Newspapers screamed indignation, with headlines like, “Who Destroyed the Maine? $50,000 Reward,” “Spanish Treachery” and “Invasion!”
Hearst and a rival newspaper magnate, Joseph Pulitzer, published fake images of Spanish troops placing Cubans into concentration camps where they suffered and died from disease and hunger. Other unsubstantiated stories reported that an American civilian was imprisoned without a trial and that no American was safe in Cuba.
Hearst repeated rumors and lies and so has Musk but Musk’s have reached tens of millions of people around the world.
For example, false and misleading claims spread rapidly on X after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. Musk pointed users to known spreaders of disinformation for updates about the war and later Musk asked users to stay “close to the truth” in posts about the conflict.
The European Union launched an investigation of X after a previous warning about disinformation and illegal content on the platform linked to the Israel-Hamas war.
In March 2020, Musk said the “coronavirus panic is dumb” and in an email to Tesla employees, Musk referred to COVID-19 as a “specific form of the common cold.” He predicted that confirmed COVID-19 cases would not exceed 0.1 percent of the U.S. population.
Musk promoted a false theory about the October 2022 attack of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband. He used X to spread disinformation and “election conspiracy theories” about the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s relief efforts for Hurricane Helene.
Musk repeatedly used X to promote the lie that Democrats had been “importing” immigrants to vote for them. Musk has used his X account in support of Trump to repeatedly push falsehoods about immigration.
In a July 2024 post on X, Musk shared a deepfake video of Vice President Kamala Harris. The video appeared to show Harris saying she was the “ultimate diversity hire” and did not know how to manage the United States.
On September 15, 2024, after the second assassination attempt on trump, Musk wrote on X that it was odd that nobody had tried to kill President Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.
A November 2024 USA Today investigation described how Musk was “sharing and posting demonstrably false anti-Harris disinformation to his 200 million followers” on X and promoting conspiracy theories and falsehoods about Democrats and election fraud.
Hearst was elected twice to the U.S. House of Representatives and he lost a 1906 bid to be governor of New York. Musk is not running for office but he has been steadily gaining political influence. He has even been mentioned to be the next powerful Speaker of the House.
Like Hearst, Musk has long waded into international waters as a self-appointed, unelected, far right wing, unofficial diplomat. Most recently Musk sparked backlash in Germany after calling Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “incompetent fool” and backing the country’s far-right, white supremacist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Karl Lauterbach, the German health minister, spanked Musk when he responded on X that Musk “should not interfere in our politics,” adding that “his platform profits from hate and incitement and radicalizes people.”
The AfD party was established in 2013 as an anti-euro party, but it has since focused more on immigration and has been seen as increasingly far-right. Musk doesn’t see it that way and he posted on X in June, “Why is there such a negative reaction from some about AfD?”
Musk has clashed with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and called Britain a “tyrannical police state.” Musk has endorsed calls for a new election and inflamed tensions by saying England was on the verge of civil war following days of far-right violence in August.
In December 2024, Musk was planning to donate $100 million to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party to help Farage to become Prime Minister.
The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2024 that Musk had been in regular contact with Vladimir Putin, Sergey Kiriyenko, and other high ranking Russian government officials since late 2022. The Journal reported the Russians and Musk talked about personal topics, business and geopolitical matters.
In one instance Putin asked Musk to avoid activating his Starlink satellite system over Taiwan, to appease Chinese president Xi Jinping. In October 2022, Musk posted a Twitter poll and “peace plan” to resolve the Russian invasion of Ukraine by allowing Russia to keep the Crimea Peninsula, while Ukraine would adopt a neutral status and drop the bid to join NATO. It was reported that Musk allegedly spoke with Putin prior to the proposal. Trump has pointed to similar paths to end the war.
Trump has named Musk and billionaire one-time GOP presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, co-directors of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, an agency which does not yet exist other than in the minds of trump, Musk and Ramaswamy and MAGA.
Trump said in a statement that if DOGE is actually created, it will be led by the “Great Elon Musk” and “American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy.” Together they will lead the “Manhattan Project of our time” to slash billions of dollars, dismantle the government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies, trump said.
DOGE is a reference to dogecoin, a cryptocurrency created by software engineers in 2013. The Doge meme features a zoomed in photo of a dog’s face with his eyebrows raised, and became popular online in the early 2010s. The dog is Kabosu, a Shiba Inu who lived to 18 years old before his death earlier this year. The doge also is the chief magistrate of Venice or Genoa.
Musk wants DOGE to delete the IRS, end the Federal Reserve, end remote work and shrink the federal payroll, slash humanitarian aid, cancel many small grants, and privatize the U.S. Postal Service.
Musk’s seat on DOGE would surely come into conflict with his personal portfolio. He has more than $15 billion in federal contracts, mostly through his SpaceX rocket company that NASA relies on for aspects of its rocket program. The Pentagon depends on Musk for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite services, which are critical for U.S. military operations around the world. Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles account for almost half of all EV sales in the U.S. and are largely manufactured in China. Tesla opened its Gigafactory Shanghai facility, one of Tesla’s largest factories.
As of February 2024, Tesla has made $9 billion from government-initiated systems of zero-emissions credits. Tax credits offered in California, at the federal level and by other governments have enabled Tesla’s battery electric vehicles to be price-competitive in comparison with internal combustion engine vehicles.
If the past is any indicator, if DOGE is implemented, it will not last very long.
Musk and trump first met in December 2016, not long after trump was elected President. Musk was invited to join trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum, a group of business leaders who advised the President on economic issues. The forum was created in February 2017 and was disbanded six months later. Several members of the 16-member board resigned within months including Musk who quit the group in protest to trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate agreement.
Trump also named an Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission in March 2017. The commission was designed to help combat the opioid epidemic. It disbanded after just nine months, with the opioid epidemic raging.
The American Manufacturing Council was appointed in 2017 by trump. Within months a dozen of the CEOs on the council decided to withdraw and the body was disolved.
Then there was the oxymoronic Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, also known as the Voter Fraud Commission, which trump established in May 2017. Trump created the commission to investigate voter fraud after trump made false claims that millions of undocumented immigrants voted in the 2016 presidential election.
The commission lasted eight months. On January 3, 2018, Trump disbanded the body, because of unfounded claims of election fraud and many states’ refusal to turn over information as well as the pending lawsuits. The commission found no evidence of voter fraud.
Like trump, Musk has huge plans and he clearly wants to go beyond mere influencing of governments.
In 2020, Musk spent $2.5 billion to buy thousands of acres of land just outside Austin, Texas. His plan is to build the company town named Snailbrook in Bastrop County, Texas.
In 2016, Musk invested $100 million to co-found Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company. Neuralink aims to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI) by creating devices that are embedded in the brain. Such technology could enhance memory or allow the devices to communicate with software.
In 2019, Musk announced work on a device that could embed threads into a human brain. At a 2020 live demonstration, Musk described one of the early devices as “a Fitbit in your skull” that could soon cure paralysis, deafness, blindness, and other disabilities. Many neuroscientists and publications criticized the claims as “highly speculative” and “neuroscience theater.”
Musk closed his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter on October 27, 2022. Fidelity released a report estimating that Twitter was worth only one-third of its pre-Musk value. He rebranded the company as “X” and has been accused of posting unproven conspiracies related to trump. Soon after he bought Twitter, Musk restored trump’s account.
The company sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate for reporting a rise in hateful content on the X platform. Musk accused the center of trying to drive advertisers away from the platform.
Musk also threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, claiming that the nonprofit organization’s statements about rising hate speech on the social media platform have undermined X’s advertising revenue.