The Trump administration certainly hasn’t made itself look good since taking over the White House. President Donald Trump has appointed a cabinet of controversial secretaries, from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Kristi Noem, and has signed dozens of executive orders into effect since his inauguration on Jan. 20. However, the individual whom Trump has appointed to his office as one of his Senior Advisors, serving throughout his time as the 47th President of the United States, is probably the most controversial of them all – Mr. Elon Musk.
Musk is a self-defined “serial entrepreneur,” being famous for owning several billion-dollar companies like Tesla Motors, Space Exploration and Technologies Corporation or SpaceX, and social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. As of December 2024, Musk has a net worth of nearly $400 Billion.
Despite everything that Musk has done preceding and during his political influence, there is a small part of me that feels bad for him. He grew up in apartheid South Africa. His father, Errol Musk, co-owned a Zambian emerald mine. Having been diagnosed on the autism spectrum, Musk recalled not being able to easily make friends in school and was relentlessly berated and bullied for being “different.” His parents divorced in 1980 when he was 9 years old. Musk was verbally and physically abused by his father, whom he chose to primarily live with after the divorce. In 1989, he moved to Canada via his mother, who is a Canadian citizen. South Africa also had a mandatory military service at the time, which Musk admitted to avoiding.
Being on the autism spectrum myself, I whole-heartedly believe that the potential of autistic and neurodivergent individuals should not be downplayed. That being said, we as a community shouldn’t be infantilized and should be held to the same standard of accountability as allistic (non-autistic) and neurotypical individuals. Because Musk has gone through everything that he has to get where he is now, identifying himself as an autistic individual does not and should not make him immune to public criticism.
Musk, since becoming Tesla Motors’ CEO in 2008, has indeed pioneered the company’s marketability. In fact, Tesla shares skyrocketed to over 14 percent on Election Day alone, following Trump’s win. With the climate change agenda being pushed on the public in recent years, people think they might be doing themselves and the environment a favor by buying an electric car. However, nearly all Tesla Cybertrucks are being recalled for design flaws resulting in safety hazards.
Musk bought Twitter.com on Oct. 20, 2022, for $44 billion. He has since rebranded it, calling it “X”, and made the website private, so that anyone without an account can’t view its content without it being reposted to other social media platforms. Musk has since pledged to protect “free speech” on his new platform, but incidents of hate speech, or “free speech” that typically targets marginalized groups or individuals in a harmful way, have become more common on the platform. In fact, Musk himself made it prohibited to tweet anything containing the words “cis” or “cisgender,” claiming it is harmful towards people who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth.
I find this incredibly ironic, especially since Musk has an estranged transgender daughter named Vivian Jenna Wilson. In her recent interview with Teen Vogue, she talked openly about the “cartoonishly evil” Trump administration, being Musk’s eldest daughter and being a young trans woman in America in 2025. With anti-trans bills being signed into law all across America left and right, to be candid about her experiences being transgender is something objectively brave for Wilson to do, especially in the wake of Musk’s comment that “the woke mind virus killed my son.” The fact that Wilson is estranged from her father by choice should say everything regarding Musk’s stance on transgender rights, including the right to simply exist.
If being openly transphobic wasn’t bad enough, Musk has continued his inexcusably shameful spiral in the public eye by concluding a speech on Trump’s inauguration day with a Nazi salute. The controversy over this being an innocent “roman salute” or simply an awkward gesture or truly being a salute reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s is absurd to me. Adolf Hitler’s beliefs were extremely nationalistic, authoritarian and antisemitic as we all know. Nazi propaganda during Hitler’s dictatorship is how he was able to effectively turn German Nationalists against European Jews and other persecuted groups, resulting in the atrocious tragedy of the Holocaust. Like Hitler, Musk’s beliefs and new installment into the oval office are inherently fascist and have the growing potential of becoming dangerous.
I’m not necessarily saying the Trump administration with Musk being a senior advisor will go as far as to commit a genocide against a marginalized social group within the United States, but they’re certainly going down the path of dehumanizing others as of late. The Trump administration is already not complying with the Supreme Court when told to bring back legal citizens detained by ICE to the United States after some were sent to a prison camp in El Salvador. Musk, of course, has been silent over the matter.
In fact, he wants to “leave politics” because he’s “tired of attacks from the left.” To Musk and Trump alike, anyone who disagrees with their far-right conservative ideals for the American government or criticizes them in one way or another is part of “the left.” They want to suppress differing opinions from their own by any means, including censoring and silencing voices on social media or by passing dehumanizing executive orders and federal laws.
In my opinion, boycotting Tesla isn’t enough. To say that you don’t agree with the actions or words of Musk says one thing, but to continue driving around a Tesla says something completely different. Liberal and conservative Tesla drivers alike should rethink what they’re actively financially supporting and what agenda they’re literally driving around.
In the economic sphere of good old-fashioned American capitalism, society allows for billionaire businessmen like Musk to be created, and unfortunately, wealth distribution often goes hand-in-hand with governmental power distribution. Trump wasn’t even a legitimate politician before winning the Presidential Election in 2016, in that he had no lawmaking or executive experience other than being a wealthy businessman and was quite literally able to buy his way into office through campaigning. With Musk projecting his hateful and potentially dangerous ideologies in a high-up government position, this can create a perfect storm for a fascist regime.
I hate to say it, but I think Musk is only going to get worse in terms of how far right he can really go. I hope that Trump will see that Musk is seeking more power and gets fed up with using him to squawk to the media about far right and fascist ideas. Hopefully Musk will be removed from his senior advisor position before it’s too late.
Liv Cushman can be reached at [email protected].
