Billionaire Elon Musk was on the line when president-elect Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke over the phone Wednesday, Axios first reported Friday, the first sign that the Republican super donor may be more intimately involved in a Trump administration than in the government efficiency position the pair had previously discussed publicly.
SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk speaks during a town hall for Donald Trump on Oct. 18, 2024.
Axios and the Financial Times reported that Musk was on the call when the two world leaders spoke, an unusual arrangement, and that Musk told Zelensky he would continue to support Ukraine through the use of his Starlink satellites.
Trump and Musk grew closer over the course of the election as Musk poured more than $100 million into his reelection effort and started an online crusade to have him reelected, and they’ve spoken several times about a position for Musk in the Trump administration, but neither ever publicly mentioned a foreign policy role for the billionaire.
In declaring his presidential victory in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Donald Trump was quick to praise billionaire Elon Musk as a "super genius" after the Tesla founder and X owner donated more than $100 million of his personal money to Trump’s campaign: “Let me tell you we have a new star…a star is born, Elon.”
“He’s a character, he’s a special guy, he’s a super genius,” Trump said of Musk before adding, “We have to protect our geniuses, we don’t have that many of them.”
The praise from Trump came after months of heavy campaign spending and vocal support from Musk, who Trump has said will have a government position under his new administration.
Trump in September said if he wins reelection he will “create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government,” a plan first proposed by Musk, and said the world’s richest person has has agreed to head the task force under a Trump administration.
Musk first brought up the idea for a commission that would ensure “taxpayer’s money… is spent in a good way” during a conversation with the former president in August, which was live streamed on his social media platform, X.
After Trump’s announcement, Musk responded to a tweet about a Washington Post report that Trump is considering him for a role in auditing U.S. agencies and identifying government programs to cut, saying he “can’t wait” and that there is "a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go.”
In October, Trump told Fox News Musk is a "great business guy" and described his new role as “Secretary of Cost-Cutting.”
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Trump and Musk are first known to have met privately last year when they discussed a potential buyout of the Truth Social platform, according to The Washington Post. The New York Times reported the pair met again in March and Musk endorsed Trump for the presidency in July this year. That same month, Musk helped to start the pro-Trump America PAC, which spent over $169 million on the 2024 presidential race. Musk first appeared in-person to to support the former president at a rally in Butler, Penn., in October and spoke on stage at a campaign event at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 27. Trump told supporters in his victory speech that Musk spent “two weeks in Philadelphia and different parts of Pennsylvania campaigning.”
$118.6 million. That’s how much Musk poured into the America PAC between July and last month, with $43.6 million in October alone. His efforts included daily $1 million giveaways to registered swing state voters who signed the PAC’s petition supporting free speech and gun rights.
It’s unclear if Musk will be able to serve in a public position due to his vast private business interests. Entrepreneurs looking to take government jobs usually divest their shares and holdings to avoid conflicts of interest, but Musk is unlikely to be able to divest his massive stakes in companies like Tesla, SpaceX and X without causing major market disruption. And, because his business interests touch so many sectors, he could find himself forced to recuse regularly to avoid the appearance of any conflict.
Trump was often criticized in his first presidency for his own conflicts of interest after deciding not to divest his business empire before entering public office. The ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington says he committed more than 3,400 violations while in office, including visits by foreign officials and political events held at Trump-owned properties, dozens of foreign trademarks granted to Trump businesses and more than 100 events by special interest groups held at Trump properties. A report from American Public Media found that more than half of Trump's 20-person Cabinet during his presidency had engaged in "questionable or unethical conduct," including in relation to their business holdings and investments.
The relationship between Musk and Trump has not always been an amicable one. In the lead up to the 2016 election, Musk said Trump was “not the right guy” to be president before going on to join—and later quit—two of the president’s business-advisory councils. In 2022, when Musk was attempting to buy Twitter, Trump called him a "bullshit artist." He said Musk would never be able to buy Twitter, and said Musk claimed he'd never voted for a republican after privately telling Trump he voted for him before. In response, Musk said it was "time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset." At the time, he said Trump was too old to run for the presidency again in 2024 and said he was supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. That same year, Musk reinstated Trump’s previously banned Twitter account.
Musk, who founded Tesla, SpaceX and other companies, is ranked as the richest person in the world as of Wednesday with an estimated net worth of $264.7 billion, roughly $50 billion more than Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the second-richest person. Trump has an estimated $6 billion net worth as of Wednesday thanks to his stakes in Truth Social's parent company, the Trump Media and Technology Group, his real estate investments and other assets.