Barely a month. That's how long it's been since Donald Trump's inauguration. Since then, he has saturated media space. Or more precisely, they've been saturating it, as the American president shares the stage with his unofficial vice-president of sorts: Elon Musk. Not so long ago, he was still described as "the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX", but he has now taken on a huge role in public debate. Politics, economics, international relations, artificial intelligence... he's involved in everything, and on each of these subjects, the interests of his companies are never far away.
To get an idea of the scale of the Musk phenomenon, let's take a look at the articles on Elon Musk published in the past week. First, there's the proposed $100 billion takeover of Open AI, the start-up behind ChatGPT. Then there's the story of the dismantling of Usaid, the world's largest development agency, followed by the progress of his attempt to take control of the Treasury's payment system, and finally, we see him in the Oval Office explaining how his work at the head of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) will turn around America's public finances.
To understand how we got here, we need to go back to last summer. In July, Donald Trump, then in the middle of a rally in Pennsylvania, came within inches of death, and history will remember this incredible photo of him with his fist raised, the mark of an exceptional political instinct. That day was a real turning point, because it precipitated Elon Musk's rallying. From then on, the billionaire was to invest himself and above all - $277 million according to the Washington Post - in the Trump campaign. An investment that today gives him a central role in American politics, for a figure who, let's not forget, was not elected by anyone and couldn't even run for president because he wasn't born in the United States.
Elon Musk is now at the head of a structure created especially for him, the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), whose aim is to slash public spending, as he has done in the past with his companies; Twitter (now X) being the emblematic example of what a "cost killer" like Elon Musk can do. We all remember his arrival at the Twitter offices with a washbasin. Since then, he has reportedly fired 80% of his employees. This new role fits in quite well with his political vision to reduce the missions of the federal state to the strictest regalian aspects.
Musk's first target in his new role was Usaid, the United States Agency for International Development. With a budget of some $40 billion, the United States has until now been by far the largest provider of humanitarian aid. But as soon as Donald Trump took office, everything accelerated: funding was frozen, the agency was placed under the control of the Secretary of State, and staff posted around the world were made redundant and repatriated. It took the Trump administration just twenty days to methodically dismantle a federal agency created in 1961, employing more than 10,000 people, and which over the years has become a cornerstone of American soft power. While the abolition of Usaid requires the approval of Congress, and numerous legal proceedings have been launched, the agency has de facto been put out of business.
Perhaps more worryingly, Elon Musk's collaborators at DOGE have taken control of the U.S. Treasury's payments system, which manages essential federal financial flows such as public pensions, the Medicare program and federal civil servants' salaries. This situation was described in an internal memo from the US Treasury as "the greatest internal threat ever faced by the Internal Revenue Service". And the justice system reacted swiftly, with a federal judge issuing a temporary order barring access to Treasury data to "all political appointees" and "all government special agents", pending a hearing scheduled for today.
So, for the time being, justice has stopped Elon Musk in his effort. Many legal proceedings are ultimately arbitrated by the Republican-majority Supreme Court. Still, it's hard to believe that Donald Trump and Elon Musk, two men with solid egos, will be able to coexist for 4 years. So it's likely that Donald Trump will blow the whistle on Elon Musk, with his usual: "you're fired".
Drawing: Amandine Victor
