Elon Musk is the new darling of the Republican Party and a blatant example of modern conservative hypocrisy.
Before the 2024 election, the billionaire most conservatives cared about was George Soros, allegedly the mastermind behind the Democratic Party’s success in the 21st century. What Musk has done in the last two months puts Soros to shame.
In the last few months, Musk donated $277 million to President Donald Trump’s campaign — more than Soros has spent in the last eight presidential and midterm elections combined. Musk received a special government position granting security clearance with zero Congressional approval, for an organization he named after his meme coin.
Some have heralded Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency as the solution to the government’s wastefulness. That hardly excuses the growing pile of lawsuits as DOGE accesses sensitive information and pressures government employees into retirement. Fourteen states sued Trump and DOGE, alleging Musk’s power is unconstitutional. His power is unprecedented for a person neither elected nor congressionally approved.
DOGE has drastically reduced the United States Agency for International Development, which is responsible for global health, disaster relief, and socioeconomic development in foreign countries. USAID shrunk from 10,000 employees to fewer than 300 employees. The White House cited 12 examples of wasteful spending to justify the reduction, accounting for 1% of total USAID spending. Fact-checkers identified the majority of those examples as state department expenditures, not USAID expenditures, and discovered other false or misleading claims in the list. Even if every example cited was accurate, that does not justify a 97% employee reduction.
Musk does not limit his political meddling to the United States. He supports Alternative für Deutschland, a far-right party in Germany labeled a “suspected extremist organization” and placed under government surveillance by Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency — a move upheld in court, twice. Björn Höcke, the leader of the party’s far-right faction, said Germany should make a 180-degree turn on its attitude toward its Nazi history after calling a memorial to murdered Jews in Berlin a “monument of shame.”
Musk spoke at the party’s 2025 rally and said Germany has “too much of a focus on past guilt and we need to move beyond that.” His comments are at best irresponsible, considering AfD’s unusually high rate of Holocaust denial, and at worst an endorsement of Hocke’s standpoint.
That rally came days after Musk twice used a gesture identical to the Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration — a move fiercely defended by conservatives as a harmless attempt to symbolize giving his heart to the crowd. Musk apparently was too busy posting Nazi puns on the social platform X to explicitly deny the meaning of his gesture.
Speaking of X, conservatives cite the Musk-owned social media site as evidence of his business acumen and commitment to free speech. His commitment to free speech has been especially useful to Russian propagandists. According to an EU commission, X has more Russian disinformation than any other social media site. The nonprofit Reset credited that to Musk’s dismantling of safety standards. X recently paid a $5.2 million fine to the Brazilian government for failing to ban 100 accounts flagged for misinformation, hate speech, and attacks on democracy.
This does not bother a majority of conservatives. The Pew Research Center found that 73% of Republicans have a favorable view of Musk, despite 54% of Americans expressing unfavorable views of Musk.
Republicans lose credibility when they turn a blind eye to a billionaire’s political and business track record, so long as he supports the correct side. If a Democratic billionaire became Harris’ biggest donor in the election and then received an ambiguous government position with wide-sweeping power and confidential information, Republicans would riot. Instead, they hail Musk as a visionary and a genius.
Through rose-tinted glasses, Musk’s red flags look like normal flags. Partisan loyalty is no excuse for supporting a corrupt billionaire with no regard for the Constitution.
Nathan Stanish is a senior studying religion.
