Musk Uses His X Ownership And White House Position To Push Trump Priorities, Intimidate Detractors
WASHINGTON (AP) — The emergence of X owner Elon Musk as the most influential figure around President Donald Trump has created an extraordinary dynamic — a White House adviser who’s using one of the world’s most powerful information platforms to sell the government’s talking points while intimidating its detractors.
In recent days, Musk has used X to promote Trump’s positions to his 215 million followers, attack an agency he’s trying to shut down as “evil” and claim a Treasury employee who resigned under pressure over payment system access committed a crime.
His use of the social media platform he owns has become both a cudgel and a megaphone for the Republican administration at a time that his power to shape the electorate’s perspective is only growing, as more Americans turn to social media and influencers to get their news.
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Yet for the world’s richest man to single-handedly control the levers of one of the most influential online communication channels while holding an office in the White House complex is “unthinkable” in our current system of government, said Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University and the author of “How Democracies Die.”