What if a Pentagon contractor from South Africa, using his money and social media platform to try and return a seemingly declining former president labeled a “fascist” by his former top aide to the White House, did not have the best interests of America at heart?
That’s the alarming possibility raised by Wall Street Journal. On Thursday, the newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch reported that Elon Musk, the CEO of X and Tesla, has been “in regular contact” with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.
Musk previously denied that he was in constant conversation with a dictator. In October 2022, he was adamant that he was being defamed: Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, had just reported that the 53-year-old billionaire spoke with Putin before he himself proposed a Ukraine “peace” deal on X — one that called for Kyiv ceding territory to Moscow and pledging to remain “neutral” by never joining NATO.
“I have spoken to Putin only once and that was about 18 months ago,” Musk responded. “The subject matter was space.”
But, according to the Journal, citing officials in the U.S., Europe and Russia, Musk has been engaged in conversations not just with Putin but “other high-ranking officials” ever since, “past 2022 and into this year.” Conversations have touched on everything from “geopolitical tensions,” the outlet reported — Putin asked Musk to shut off his Starlink internet service above Taiwan as a favor to China, where the billionaire also has substantial business dealings — to unspecified “personal topics.”
The Journal previously reported that Musk’s erratic behavior and use of illegal drugs was of concern to executives at his own company, raising questions as to why he still enjoys a security clearance from the Department of Defense.
The new reporting provides possible context for some of Musk’s eyebrow-raising interventions in Ukraine, from his pro-Russia peace plan to his decision to shut off Starlink satellite internet service above Crimea, thwarting Ukrainian efforts to take back the illegally annexed peninsula and disable Russian military assets stationed there. At the time, Musk said Ukraine’s “obvious intent” was to sink Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which would have made Starlink’s parent company, the U.S. defense contractor SpaceX, “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
Musk is also not the only right-wing billionaire in America reportedly having regular phone calls with the man responsible for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Former President Donald Trump — who sent Putin COVID tests for his own personal use during the height of the pandemic, according to the Kremlin and journalist Bob Woodward — has not denied that he too is staying in touch with the Russian strongman.
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Asked at a recent appearance to confirm reporting that he has been regularly speaking with Putin since losing the 2020 election, Trump responded with a pointed non-denial. “If I did, it’s a smart thing,” he assured his audience at the Economic Club of Chicago.
And consider that the Russian government was recently caught paying millions of dollars to right-wing influencers, including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, who all promoted anti-Ukraine, pro-Russia content on their respective channels.
What emerges, if one also assumes that nothing good can come from three right-wing billionaires conspiring, is a grim portrait of the political reality in 2024: that there is an international plot — increasingly out in the open — to undermine democracy in the United States and elsewhere. Musk and Putin are both spending millions of dollars to elect Trump, who has been more critical of the U.S. Constitution than the Kremlin’s decision to invade Ukraine, and all three are objectively more interested in money and power than democracy or the rule of law.
Whether this elite, actually existing conspiracy pans out is still up to American voters, at least the ones living in the seven competitive states. If it does, though, Trump has already promised his wealthiest supporter a role in his next administration — one that would enable someone who has made billions of dollars from U.S. government contracts to recommend cuts to “inefficient” government spending.
“I look forward to serving America,” Musk wrote on his website last month, “if the opportunity arises.”
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