Trump squarely defeated Vice President Harris in Tuesday's election, sweeping the battleground states and winning the popular vote.
In his victory speech in the early hours of the morning Wednesdsay, the president-elect offered a shoutout to Musk.
“We have a new star,” Trump said. “A star is born — Elon!”
As congratulations rolled in for the Republican presidential victor, several key figures in the business world also gave credit to Musk.
“Congrats @realDonaldTrump,” billionaire investor and Harris surrogate Mark Cuban wrote in a post on X, the social platform owned by Musk. “You won fair and square. Congrats to @elonmusk as well. #Godspeed.”
Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as White House communications director under Trump and has since become a critic of his old boss, also offered congratulations to Trump and Musk over an “incredibly well executed” campaign.
Musk endorsed Trump in July, shortly after the former president was shot in the ear in an attempted assassination at a campaign rally.
The move and months that followed marked a major rightward shift for Musk, who previously shied away from the political world and even criticized Trump at times.
The billionaire has since used his massive platform on X and immense wealth to boost the former president, launching a pro-Trump super PAC, to which he contributed about $118 million.
America PAC played a key role in the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states, occasionally drawing scrutiny with its boundary-pushing methods, such as its daily $1 million giveaways to registered swing state voters in the final weeks of the election.
Musk himself took an active role in boosting Trump’s bid, appearing at several rallies alongside the president-elect and holding a series of town halls in Pennsylvania.
GOP strategist Chris Johnson suggested Musk made the “bet” that a Trump administration would make room for innovation without government oversight.
“When you see the expansion of these bureaucracies and that getting in the way of tech development or manufacturing or energy development, you can see why they’re sympathetic,” Johnson told The Hill.
“And I think that’s the bet that Elon is making, is that a Trump administration is going to allow for the kinds of development of energy, technologies, manufacturing … with less government interference than a Democratic administration.”
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
