Elon Musk Helped Elect Trump. What Does He Expect in Return?

Even before Donald Trump was re-elected, his best-known backer, Elon Musk, had come to him with a request for his presidential transition. He wanted Trump to hire some employees from Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, as top government officials — including at the Defense Department. That request, which would seed SpaceX employees into an agency that is one of its biggest customers, is a sign of the benefits that Mr. Musk may reap after investing more than $100 million in Trump’s campaign, pushing out a near-constant stream of pro-Trump material on his social media platform, X, and making public appearances on the candidate’s behalf across the hard-fought state of Pennsylvania. In addition, Musk's allies in Congress and at the Federal Communications Commission have already challenged a decision by the commission to revoke a plan to offer SpaceX an $856 million subsidy to provide broadband internet service in rural parts of the United States. The effort was led in part by FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. He has championed Mr. Musk and SpaceX on his social media feed in recent months, even intervening in Musk’s battle with the government of Brazil over X, even though the social media company is not in Carr’s purview. (Starlink, which was caught up in the dispute, is.) House Republicans recently started an investigation into the FCC’s position on the rural internet request, suggesting that the agency’s decision might be reconsidered if Republicans take control of the commission, as is likely once Trump is sworn in.