How Elon Musk went from donating to Obama to being ‘all in’ on Trump

The billionaire tech mogul was once a ‘moderate’ but, with outbursts on cancel culture, immigration and Starmer, those days seem to be gone

Elon Musk once said he preferred to “stay out of politics”. As with many things, it appears he has changed his mind. 
This week, Sir Keir Starmer was added to the lengthy list of people who have sparred with the billionaire over remarks he has made on X, the social media platform he owns. On Monday, Musk remarked on the rioting that has swept Britain in the wake of the Southport stabbings, warning that “civil war is inevitable,” drawing a rebuke from the Prime Minister’s spokesperson. Yesterday, in an escalation of the row, he called Starmer “two-tier Keir” – a pointed critique of the way the unrest has been policed.
The interventions marked the latest and, in Britain at least, most public, staging post in Musk’s political transformation to date. A decade ago, the 53-year-old was a political “moderate” – socially liberal and fiscally conservative – who donated to Barack Obama’s Democratic Party. Even then, however, his views defied easy categorisation. Financial support for the Republicans flowed just as freely as it did for the Democrats.
But the Tesla founder no longer seems to be hedging his bets. Instead, he appears to have gone all in on Donald Trump who he has publicly endorsed as the next US leader.  
Musk’s shift to the Right has played out on Twitter, which he acquired in 2022 for $44 billion and swiftly renamed X as part of a broader reorganisation of the platform to prioritise free speech. He is a prolific and indiscriminate user himself, having posted nearly 50,000 times since joining it in 2009. In more recent times, Musk has arguably become the site’s most prominent political commentator, with 193 million followers. The entrepreneur’s Right-wing supporters hail him as a hero who has clawed back space for them online, having reinstated Trump’s account. He separately unblocked the accounts of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson, and the controversial influencer Andrew Tate. 
Among the group whose accounts were reinstated by Musk is the British agitator Tommy Robinson, who recently called Musk “the best thing to happen for free speech this century”. 
“Musk’s identity shifted when he purchased Twitter,” says Madeline Fry Schultz, an editor at the Washington Examiner. “He became known not as this guy who was really into the environment and electric cars, but this culture wars figure. The point he is making is the culture wars pay – people know they can get notoriety, podcast listens, and they will be popular on Twitter, for what it’s worth.” 
Musk certainly has no shortage of strong views on the controversial issues of the day, usually expressed in a tweet-friendly 280 characters or less. Covid-19 lockdowns? “Fascist.” His transgender daughter? The victim of a “woke mind virus.” Diversity and inclusion policies? “DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] must DIE.” President Joe Biden? Merely “a tragic front for a far left political machine.” And the traditional media? A “propaganda machine.” 
For all Musk’s previous insistence he wants to “stay out of politics,” there is now plenty of evidence to the contrary. His endorsement of Trump came after he said in 2016 that he “doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States,” and in 2022 that the former Republican president should “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”
Certainly, his political track record from the Obama administration onwards is capricious. In 2016, he supported Hillary Clinton and denounced Trump, yet in 2017 he donated large sums to Republican candidates: $50,000 to Kevin McCarthy’s McCarthy Victory Fund, and $39,600 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. In 2020, he said he voted for Biden, but made donations to both Republican and Democratic candidates. 
His support for Trump seems to be unwavering, however, at least for now… Long before he publicly backed the former president’s re-election bid in July, the New York Times reported he was privately lobbying a group of conservative billionaires to vote for the 78-year-old. He has also branded Trump’s “hush money” trial “a corruption of the law” and welcomed his choice of running mate, J.D. Vance, as an “excellent choice”.
The reasons for Musk’s shift seem to centre around a complex and interconnected set of factors, including tax policies pursued by Biden’s White House, his rejection of “woke culture” and a wider political shift among some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists, typically an overwhelmingly Democratic-supporting community.
The owner of X, SpaceX, and Tesla has been openly critical of plans previously aired by Biden to impose a 25 per cent “billionaire tax” on Americans with assets of more than $100 million. In 2022, he complained that “California used to be the land of opportunity,” but had since become “the land of taxes, overregulation and litigation”. 
As his apparent frustration has grown, Musk has acted to relocate his business, moving SpaceX and X’s headquarters out of California’s liberal tech bubble. He said he had “no choice” but to move the latter from San Francisco, the city it has been based in for nearly two decades due to local legislation. In a nod to another issue he has been repeatedly vocal about, Musk said his decision to shift SpaceX to Texas was partly due to a recent policy introduced in California which prevents schools from requiring staff to share information about a child’s gender identity with parents. “This is the final straw,” he tweeted.
His largest companies may have a long history with San Francisco, but Musk has become one of the city’s harshest critics. He has repeatedly spoken out about its rising crime rate, warning it has become “post-apocalyptic,” and overrun “gangs of violent drug addicts”.
“You could literally film a Walking Dead episode in downtown San Francisco,” he has said. After the murder of tech executive Bob Lee last year, Musk tweeted: “Many people I know have been severely assaulted… Violent crime in San Francisco is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately.”
Since taking over X, Musk has also railed against “woke culture”. In an interview with Peterson earlier this year, the South African-born business mogul said he had been “tricked” into allowing his transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson – one of five children he shares with ex-wife Justine Wilson – to access puberty blockers. 
He said she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus,” and that what happened to his family was “evil”. His daughter, for her part, said in a court filing that she does not “wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.” But Musk has continued to speak out on the issue, saying the “woke” virus has infected not only his daughter but institutions and businesses ranging from Yale University to Netflix. 
Interventions in other policy areas, such as immigration, have also been a feature of his apparent political transformation. Musk has accused Biden of intentionally “importing” migrants to bolster the Democrats chance of winning the election – a claim that has been dismissed by defenders of the US president as a baseless conspiracy theory.
But, as with the riots in Britain, Musk hasn’t limited his pronouncements to domestic matters alone. Even before he bought Twitter, he became a vocal critic of lockdown restrictions rolled out in the US and elsewhere during the COVID-19 pandemic. He re-opened Tesla’s factory in California in May 2020, disregarding the state’s lockdown order. He subsequently posted on X in favour of Canadian anti-vaccine protesters, writing: “freedom is being stripped away one piece at a time until it is gone”. 
He has also been outspoken on Russia’s war in Ukraine. Previously, he had supplied the war-torn nation with his Starlink high-speed internet technology, which became essential to its efforts to keep up communications after equipment and infrastructure was destroyed by Russian attacks. Now, Musk has increasingly come to sympathise with Republicans and other figures on the Right who oppose providing further aid to Kyiv. 
All of this has taken place against the backdrop of a wider shift within some Silicon Valley circles, where the Republicans and Trump in particular have made inroads in recent years, courting the likes of Peter Thiel, David O. Sacks and Ken Howery.
Perhaps that has made Musk more comfortable than ever in revealing his true sympathies. Certainly, as he has increasingly emerged as a central figure in this year’s presidential race, Trump has embraced his apparent conversion to his cause.
“I love Elon Musk,” he told supporters at a rally last month. With Musk having long since abandoned his mantra to stay out of politics, it seems clear the feeling is mutual.
Musk was contacted for comment via SpaceX.