Elon Musk’s partnership with Donald Trump has turned the technology mogul into a folk hero inside the Republican Party, with a political platform and relationship with grassroots voters all his own—second in popularity and stature only to the president.
Musk recently dazzled a packed ballroom of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” activists at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, D.C. A Republican operative and regular CPAC attendee described the crowd as “transfixed by him.” Trump, the GOP’s most effective grassroots fundraiser, has even started featuring Musk in appeals targeting donors who contribute in small amounts, sending out emails with subject lines like “Elon Musk is Dark MAGA!” and “I’m hoping to share your response with Elon Musk!”
The world’s richest man is leading Trump’s high-profile initiative to slash the federal workforce and find budget savings via the Department of Government Efficiency, a temporary executive branch agency, making him perhaps the most prominent figure in the administration underneath the president. But veteran Republican insiders say Musk’s stock on the right has been on the rise since at least October 2022 when he purchased Twitter. His image skyrocketed after he endorsed Trump last July and poured nearly $300 million of his personal fortune into the campaign.
That both Musk and DOGE are under fire from Democrats and facing intense media scrutiny makes the Republican base love him more. It’s the same dynamic that helped Trump cultivate a loyal following on the right during his initial years as a politician.
“Elon has become something of a folk hero amongst based Republicans,” Gregg Keller, a Republican strategist in St. Louis, told The Dispatch. “He’s the richest man in the world, brilliant, aggressive, confident and quirky in an endearing way—and it’s clear to all of us that the president loves the guy, which makes us love him all the more.”
The 53-year-old’s exalted business success is certainly an aspect of his appeal on the right. Musk is the CEO of Tesla, the founder of space exploration group SpaceX and satellite communications company Starlink. And, as of Monday, is estimated by Forbes to be worth well north of $300 billion.
But the linchpins of Musk’s popularity are his makeover of the social media platform Twitter (now X) and his quasi-religious devotion to Trump.
Conservatives believe—not without some merit—that Twitter was hostile to Republican politicians and policies alike, along with center-right influencers and opinions. Indeed, they accuse the platform under previous ownership of willful and systematic censorship, while promoting Democrats and liberal thought. The changes Musk made, conservatives argue, reestablished principles of free speech on the platform. Musk’s subsequent decision to back Trump’s quest to return to the White House, especially the way he threw himself into the endeavor, skyrocketed and sealed the goodwill Republicans have come to feel for him.
Musk did not just write a big check, although he did. He did not just underwrite a super PAC—America PAC—funding critical voter turnout operations in key battleground states, although he did.
Musk practically lived in Pennsylvania during the homestretch of the 2024 campaign, traveling the commonwealth to headline town hall-style events during which, as The Dispatch witnessed firsthand in suburban Philadelphia, he would field audience questions for hours in a bid to boost voter registration and turnout for Trump. Musk became a political celebrity with a fanatical following as well, by harnessing his political popularity and his ubiquity on X, interacting with rank-and-file platform users and chastising Republican officials he deems insufficiently supportive of the president.
In the history of Republican politics, there has never been a figure quite like Musk, explained Matthew Continetti, author of The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism and director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
“I can’t think of a precedent,” Continetti told The Dispatch in an email. “Musk is J.P. Morgan, Harry Hopkins, and Rush Limbaugh rolled into one.”
How popular is Musk? Last month, his favorable rating with Republican voters reached 75 percent, including 44 percent who had a “very” favorable opinion of Musk, according to the GOP polling firm Echelon Insights, which has been tracking the billionaire’s image for the last three years. Meanwhile, among independents, Musk last month registered a favorability of just 36 percent. Democrats gave him an abysmal, although hardly surprising, 13 percent.
A Republican pollster unaffiliated with Echelon Insights told The Dispatch that Musk is, without exception in his private surveys for clients, more well known than Vice President J.D. Vance and just slightly less known than Trump. “Elon is the second-most well known public figure among Republican primary voters,” this GOP strategist said, requesting anonymity to discuss Vance’s standing in the party.
This helps explain why Republicans in Congress have avoided criticizing Musk publicly, even as they grew frustrated with the cuts and firings at federal departments he has spearheaded via the Department of Government Efficiency. (Steve Bannon is among the few Trump allies willing to speak ill of Musk to reporters, telling The Dispatch in late January that DOGE’s leader “considers American workers to be useless human beings that get in the way … and he’s profited off their exploitation.”)
Congressional Republicans have been plenty critical privately, however, as have members of Trump’s Cabinet, with complaints revolving around Musk’s haphazard approach to axing government programs and workers. House and Senate Republicans are worried about political blowback at home ahead of the 2026 midterm elections; Trump’s Cabinet secretaries don’t appreciate having their power diminished inside their own departments and complain it’s undermining their ability to effectively carry out their jobs.
Perhaps that’s why Trump has somewhat reined in Musk, declaring in a social media post that the DOGE team will recommend spending and personnel cuts but cabinet secretaries will have final authority going forward. “I have instructed the Secretaries and Leadership to work with DOGE on Cost Cutting measures and Staffing,” Trump said. “As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go. We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’”
But as The Dispatch reported in late January, Musk’s close working relationship with Trump remains intact, say knowledgeable Republican operatives, who requested anonymity to discuss both the president and Musk.
“The Trump-Elon relationship is only growing stronger,” a GOP strategist said Monday. The way to understand the president’s move to curtail DOGE’s independence, added a Trumpworld Republican insider, is that he’s bringing order and precision to the cost-cutting process. That’s not the same as Trump losing his affection for him. “Musk is surviving,” the Trumpworld insider said, as is DOGE’s White House mandate.
“It’s institutionalizing itself,” this source said. “The week-by-week thermometer-check on how your relationship is with the president—if I were the DOGE team, I’d be feeling pretty confident.”
Musk’s staying power with Trump might also rest on the unique political benefits the partnership gives the president. Besides Musk’s bank account and the wide reach of his social media platform X, the businessman is a worldwide celebrity who lends Trump, 79, a trendy, youthful vigor and future-oriented optimism.
In politics, second acts can be difficult to pull off. Voters get bored, or leadership styles and legislative agendas wear thin. Musk, Republican insiders say, helped make Trump new again despite having dominated American politics for nearly a decade.
It doesn’t hurt that Musk is so admired among technology executives and “manosphere” influencers so eminent with the young male voters and who, in tandem, helped seal Trump’s return to the White House after four years out of power. Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump over then-Vice President Kamala Harris and whose The Joe Rogan Experience might be the most listened to podcast of this politically important genre, had Musk back on his show in late February.
“Musk was an actual value-add in the campaign—especially with young men. He’s this Tony Stark-like figure and I think it helped Trump, an old baby boomer, bridge a generational gap,” Brad Todd, a Republican strategist in Washington, D.C., told The Dispatch. “One of things with having Elon in the administration is adding an element of newness that Trump couldn’t come up with himself.”
