Opinion We all know the US’s incoming president, Donald Trump, has gone off-script in a way that is almost comical. Gulf of America? Make Greenland great again? Taking over the Panama Canal?

Unfortunately, there’s a method to his pronouncements. After all, he was elected president, and millions of Americans think he’s God’s gift to the country.

But, why are tech leaders and billionaires cosying up to him?

In the case of Elon Musk, many would guess that power and money lie at the heart of the new friendship. Musk, who also seems to be wandering further into internet troll territory by the day, has become the “First Buddy.” 

It wasn’t always that way. After all, Musk said Trump didn’t have “the sort of character that reflects well on the United States,” and advised that people shouldn’t elect him back in 2016. As recently as July 2022, Trump called Musk a “bullshit artist.” Mind you, this came after Musk said he’d let Trump back on Xitter. Following that, Musk suggested, “It’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.” Well, that didn’t happen, did it?

Instead, in the wake of more sparring between the two, Musk “fully endorsed” Trump after the former president was shot in an attempted assassination. He, along with tech billionaire Peter Thiel, pushed their hand-picked vice-president candidate, JD Vance, to be Trump’s running mate.

Then, fueled in no small part by Musk’s financial and social networking clout, Trump became president. Since then, Musk, along with another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, were chosen to lead the non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to, as Trump said, “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle the Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restruct