Elon Musk has been actively involved in politics, particularly in the United States and Europe, throughout the majority of his business career. Despite historically donating to and voting for both Democrats and Republicans, his political contributions have since shifted almost entirely to right-wing candidates and politicians, outright stating in 2022 that he would no longer support Democrats. In the time since, Musk has become more vocal about his views, frequently promoting falsehoods about election fraud. As a result, he has been described as conservative, although he rejects the label and calls himself a moderate.
Musk played a significant role in the 2024 United States presidential election by establishing a political action committee (PAC) in support of Donald Trump for his campaign, making him the election's largest donor with over US$277 million.
Following Trump's 2024 victory, Musk was appointed to co-run a new temporary government organization popularly known as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), serving until May 2025, when Musk departed from the Department.
In 2024, he started supporting international far-right political parties, activists, and causes. A February 2025 NBC News analysis found he had boosted far-right political movements to cut immigration and curtail regulation of business in at least 18 countries on six continents since 2023. His international political activities have been scrutinized, particularly in Europe, with some saying his actions and comments appear as "foreign interference" in domestic affairs. Musk's comments and actions have received increasing criticism from some of the governments and leaders of European countries, in particular regarding his support of Alternative for Germany during the 2025 German federal elections.
United States
Musk became a U.S. citizen in 2002, founding SpaceX that year using his share of the profits from PayPal's sale to eBay. From 2008 to 2013, Musk flew to Washington, D.C. forty times, according to biographer Ashlee Vance. At a Vanity Fair event with Y Combinator president Sam Altman in 2015, Musk said he was "involved in politics as little as possible". Prior to the 2016 United States presidential election, Musk donated to Hillary Clinton and later said he voted for her. In November 2016, Musk criticized Donald Trump as "not the right guy" in an interview with CNBC. The following month, Trump appointed Musk to his Strategic and Policy Forum. Musk later endorsed Trump for the 2024 United States presidential election.
A 2012 report from the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that tracks government spending, found that since 2002, SpaceX had spent more than $4 million on lobbying the United States Congress and more than $800,000 in political contributions to Democrats and Republicans. As for Musk specifically, the same report said that "SpaceX's campaign to win political support has been systematic and sophisticated," and that "unlike most tech-startups, SpaceX has maintained a significant lobbying presence in Washington almost since day1" and that "Musk himself has donated roughly $725,000 to various campaigns since 2002. In 2004, he contributed $2,000 to President George W. Bush's reelection campaign, maxing out (over $100,000)Timothy P. Carney, "Carney: Green stimulus profiteer comes under IRS scrutiny" , WashingtonExaminer.com, October 14, 2012. to Barack Obama's reelection campaign and donated $5,000 to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who represents Florida, a state critical to the space industry. [...] All told, Musk and SpaceX gave out roughly $250,000 in the 2012 election cycle."
In 2017, Musk made his public first entry into major American politics, speaking at the National Governors Association at the invitation of Brian Sandoval.
By January 2017, Musk had met with Trump at Trump Tower to argue for the SpaceX Mars colonization program. That month, he told Gizmodo that he was among several "voices of reason" for Trump. In June, he resigned from his positions on Trump's advisory councils after the United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement. Musk donated to an organization benefiting Republican members of the House of Representatives and an additional to a separate group ahead of the 2018 House of Representatives elections, defending his decision in order to "maintain dialogue". The following year, he offered an endorsement of Andrew Yang's presidential campaign and tacitly supported Kanye West's campaign in the 2020 presidential election, but said that he attempted to convince West to postpone his campaign in an interview with Maureen Dowd.
Speaking to Kara Swisher in September 2020, Musk considered voting for Trump if Joe Biden was not a viable candidate, though he later said he voted for Biden. In May 2022, Musk stated that the Democratic Party had become the "party of division and hate" and that he would vote for Republicans, later urging voters vote for Republicans in that year's midterm elections in order to counter a Democratic presidency.
In October 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had given over million to Citizens for Sanity, a political organization that targeted Democrats on issues such as medical care for transgender children and illegal immigration. He publicly endorsed Ron DeSantis in his presidential campaign the following year, hosting DeSantis in a Twitter Spaces event that was marred by technical issues. In August 2023, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy suggested that Musk should serve as a presidential advisor for his presidential bid. That fall he supported Republican Ron DeSantis for the 2024 US presidential election, giving $10 million to his campaign in 2023, and hosted DeSantis's campaign announcement on a Twitter Spaces event. In January 2024, Musk participated in a forum with Democratic presidential primary challenger, Representative Dean Phillips regarding his presidential bid.
According to The Washington Post, Musk expressed support for Trump at an event hosted by businessman Nelson Peltz. In March 2024, The New York Times reported that he had met Trump at Mar-a-Lago; Musk believed that Biden should be defeated in the 2024 presidential election at the time. Approximately thirty minutes after a would-be assassin shot and wounded Trump at a campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, Musk endorsed Trump. He congratulated Trump's decision to name senator JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate.
During the transition period after Trump was re-elected, Musk became omnipresent at Mar-a-Lago, where his activities led The Washington Post to refer to him as "somewhere between unofficial co-president and 'first buddy'". In December, after Musk helped to kill a government funding bill, his outsize influence led some politicians and political commentators to start calling him "President Musk", or variants like "Shadow President Elon Musk". AI-generated images using this theme circulated on social media, such as one showing Musk being inaugurated while Trump held the bible on which Musk took his oath. Another, titled "President Musk", showed Trump as a puppet and Musk as the puppeteer. Cartoonists also created works with Musk as president, accompanied by Trump. He has been regarded as an éminence grise by various sources.
Musk attended Trump's inauguration in the United States Capitol rotunda with his son X Æ A-Xii, seated in close proximity to Trump. After the inauguration, he spoke at Trump's inaugural rally at Capital One Arena. During his speech, Musk clasped his right hand against his chest and raised out his arm above his head with his palm facing down, and turned around to perform the gesture to the audience behind him before saying, "My heart goes out to you." The gesture led to an unresolved controversy over whether or not he was giving a Nazi salute.
In February 2025, Musk attended the Conservative Political Action Conference. Argentine President Javier Milei gave Musk a chainsaw, which is a symbol that Milei has used in campaigns for cutting public spending.
In April 2025, Musk engaged in a very public dispute over tariffs with other figures in the Trump administration, particularly Peter Navarro who Musk called "truly a moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks". Navarro had labeled Tesla a "car assembler" as opposed to a car manufacturer and dismissed Musk's opinions on tariffs as self interest. When asked to comment on the dispute Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded "Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue."
In September 2025, Musk called the Anti-Defamation League a "hate group" and accused it of being anti-Christian in nature.
Political action committees
In June 2024, The New York Times revealed that a super PAC known as America PAC had spent at least million since the May 2024 to support Trump in the 2024 election. A website had been established collecting voters' information and encouraging them to vote. The Wall Street Journal reported in July that Musk said he would commit a monthly donation of million to the super PAC; after the Journal published its article, Musk disputed its accuracy.
In October, a political action committee known as RBG PAC, in reference to the deceased Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, spent at least million on advertisements associating Trump with Ginsburg and her pro-abortion stance, according to a Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing. Clara Spera, Ginsburg's granddaughter, criticized the group in a statement; Ginsburg denounced Trump in an interview with The New York Times in 2016 and did not want to be replaced on the Court until Trump was out of office. An FEC filing in December revealed that Musk was RBG PAC's only donor, with a contribution of $20.5 million.
By the end of Trump's presidential campaign, Musk had spent $277 million supporting Trump and allied Republicans, making the largest individual political donor of the 2024 election and the largest individual political donor since at least 2010 outside of candidates funding their own campaigns. Musk's donations primarily went to his super PAC, America PAC. Musk also launched a $1 million a day giveaway for swing state voters the Justice Department warned could potentially violate federal election laws.
One of the Musk-backed super PAC's, Building America's Future, spent $45 million in so-called "false flag" ads, intended to look like they come from a progressive Harris-backed organization, while deceptively describing policies Harris did not support. Anthony Romeo, a strategist for Building America's Future told the Washington Post, “People were upset on both sides of the aisle on it, said it was dishonest, disingenuous, we shouldn’t be running ads that look like Harris’s. But it worked and the numbers are undeniable."
In March 2025, Musk and Building America's Future poured considerable ad money into the Wisconsin Supreme Court judge race, favoring Trump Republican Brad Schimel over Democrat Susan Crawford, a race expected to be the most expensive state supreme court race ever. Again, the PAC ran deceptive advertisements intended to appear as though they came from Democrats. Crawford subsequently defeated Schimel in the election.
Musk spent over $90.6 million in the 2026 United States elections in support of Republican candidates, donating primarily to America PAC, Congressional Leadership Fund, and Senate Leadership Fund.
Department of Government Efficiency