Exclusive:Elon Musk Is Positioning X Behind the New Trump Presidency..See More 👇

Since the election, Mr. Musk has used his social media company to talk up how bright the future will be under the president-elect.

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Elon Musk Is Positioning X Behind the New Trump Presidency
Since the election, Mr. Musk has used his social media company to talk up how bright the future will be under the president-elect.

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Elon Musk has been on a posting blitz on X, his social media company, in support of Donald J. Trump.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
By Kate Conger and Sheera Frenkel
Reporting from San Francisco

Nov. 9, 2024
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Since Donald J. Trump won the presidential election, Elon Musk has gone all in on X to promote the incoming administration.

Mr. Musk, who owns X, posted on the platform about politics more than 400 times between Tuesday and Friday, celebrating Mr. Trump’s victory and talking about the causes that the president-elect should take up in office. Mr. Musk’s posts included a photo of himself and his son X Æ A-Xii Musk surrounded by Mr. Trump and his family at Mar-a-Lago, as well as another photo of himself with Mr. Trump that was captioned “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” a Latin phrase that appears on the dollar bill and means “a new order for the ages.”

Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, also chimed in. In reply to a post this week about the platform’s role in driving political conversation, she wrote, “Reporting for duty.”

Their comments show how Mr. Musk is increasingly positioning X as the platform behind the new Trump presidency. Since the election was called on Wednesday, Mr. Musk has used X to talk up how bright the future will be under the president-elect. In addition, he has urged X’s users to replace the news media and report on Mr. Trump’s triumphant return to office, and has promoted the platform as a go-to destination for continuing conservative conversation.

That comes on top of how Mr. Musk has used X as a battering ram for months to support Mr. Trump’s campaign. Mr. Musk, who endorsed Mr. Trump in July, held a wide-ranging audio conversation with him on X in August. That same month, Mr. Trump started using his reinstated account on the platform regularly.

On Tuesday, Mr. Musk held an audio town hall on the site urging his more than 203 million followers to vote for Mr. Trump. The president-elect credited Mr. Musk on Wednesday for helping secure his win. “A star is born — Elon!” Mr. Trump said during his victory speech.

Mr. Musk has “turned X into the church of the conservative movement,” said Steven Livingston, the founding director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University. “It’s gone from that public sphere to a bullhorn.”

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, echoed Mr. Musk’s criticisms of the news media but did not comment directly on whether X had influenced the outcome of the election.

Mr. Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Musk’s transformation of X into a right-leaning platform began when he bought the social media company in October 2022. Within weeks, he dropped the site’s content moderation guidelines in the name of free speech.

Last year, Mr. Musk had engineers add a line of code to promote his own account, which quickly propelled him to become the most followed person on the site. Engagement with his posts have since mushroomed, according to X’s metrics, making him the loudest voice on the platform.

Mr. Musk also reinstated thousands of accounts that had been banned for sharing hate speech, inciting violence or spreading misinformation about the Covid pandemic. The reinstated accounts included those of Mr. Trump and the far-right provocateur Alex Jones.

Mr. Musk, who also leads Tesla and SpaceX, was not initially a fan of Mr. Trump. But after a meeting with him in March, Mr. Musk began exploring ways to support his campaign and endorsed him after an assassination attempt against the Republican nominee in July.

Mr. Musk, the richest man in the world, threw his financial support behind the Trump campaign and funded a super PAC focused on Republican turnout. In total, Mr. Musk donated nearly $120 million.

Mr. Trump had primarily posted on his own social media platform, Truth Social, even after his X account was reinstated in late 2022. But Mr. Musk drew Mr. Trump back to the platform in August for the livestreamed conversation, during which the two men talked for more than two hours, often showering each other with compliments.

“You’re an interesting character,” Mr. Trump mused to Mr. Musk at one point. Mr. Trump also praised Tesla, saying Mr. Musk had created an “incredible” product.

X soon became a constant source of campaign support for Mr. Trump. Beyond Mr. Musk’s hundreds of posts lauding Mr. Trump, X said in May that it would host video interviews with Mr. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was also running for president, although the interviews never materialized.

Mr. Musk’s super PAC also set up a group on X to track claims of election fraud, to potentially challenge a win by the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

By Election Day, users on other social media platforms popular with the far right, including Gab, Parler and Truth Social, were turning to X for election news.

“Trust Elon to tell us what is happening,” one user posted on Gab.

Some users in a far-right militia channel on the messaging app Telegram urged one another Wednesday morning to congratulate Mr. Trump on X after his win.

“Take the celebration to X, show up for our man,” one member of the channel said. “X is where the party is,” another posted in response.

Since then, Mr. Musk, who Mr. Trump has said may lead a new “government efficiency” commission, suggested that a “major housecleaning” was needed in government agencies overseeing health and the pandemic response. He also posted that Mr. Trump’s presidency would help SpaceX reach Mars.

On Thursday, Mr. Musk posted an electoral map of the United States that was almost all red.

“They say red light helps you sleep better,” Mr. Musk wrote.

X has become a home for Trump propaganda, said Gita Johar, a professor at Columbia Business School who studies consumer behavior.

“There’s no question that it is going to be identified as Trump’s X,” she said. “That’s what it is now.”

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