Elon Musk’s hard turn to politics, in 300,000 of his own words

Musk posted about 13,000 times this year through the end of July—almost as much as in all of 2023. That’s about 61 posts a day, compared with nine in 2019.

If you were to read all his exchanges on X from the past 5½ years—including the posts he replied to—that would add up to about 1.5 million words. That’s roughly twice as long as the King James Bible. The words in Musk’s posts alone added up to more than 300,000—not counting emojis.

Musk and his representatives didn’t respond to questions from The Wall Street Journal about his posting patterns on X, formerly called Twitter.

To understand the political evolution of one of the world’s richest men, the Journal captured nearly 42,000 of Musk’s exchanges on X between 2019 and the end of July. (That’s nearly all his conversations during that period, with a small number of exceptions, such as posts he deleted. Read here for more on methodology.)

Musk’s exchanges included roughly 76,000 posts—his tweets as well as his retweets, tweets to which he replied and any quoted tweets. The Journal mapped them using the same technology that powers artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT.

All told, the Journal classified more than 500 variations of words and phrases related to political and social issues, and nearly 300 as terms related to Musk’s companies and their industries.

In 2024, Musk had roughly 230 times as many exchanges a month containing the political terms compared with 2019. Conversations containing business terms more than doubled, but fell as a share of overall tweets.

To dig into the details of the shift, the Journal manually classified each of Musk’s tweets from July 2019. Roughly two-thirds were about cars or space, both industries central to Musk’s business empire. The handful that pertained to governmental issues or the media generally related to his business interests.

In July of this year, roughly a fifth of Musk’s nearly 2,200 posts pertained to his rocket and electric-vehicle companies, or those industries, according to the Journal’s manual review. Nearly 60% of Musk’s posts were about politics, the media, current events or cultural issues.

Five years ago, Musk said he wasn’t a partisan.

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic marked a turning point. A tweet calling the “coronavirus panic" dumb was his first post to get more than one million likes in the Journal’s analysis.

In subsequent tweets, Musk criticized government-mandated lockdowns and sparred with local authorities over reopening Tesla’s factory in Fremont, Calif. He complained about the power of “unelected" officials over pandemic-related mandates, with nine of his conversations on the platform containing the term in May 2020.

Musk had courted controversy on Twitter in prior years, such as when his tweets about taking Tesla private led the Securities and Exchange Commission to sue him. But he began taking on a more political tone. In May 2020, he tweeted a reference to the movie “The Matrix" that is used by some on the right as a rallying cry. In the movie, the red pill allows the main character to see the reality behind the illusion.

Throughout 2020, Musk’s Twitter exchanges directly named President Biden, who was elected in November of that year, once. In 2021, Musk repeatedly clashed with the president and other Democrats whom he accused of unfairly treating him and his companies.

Musk bristled when the Biden administration invited only automakers with unionized workforces to a White House event on electric vehicles in August 2021, excluding Tesla. He continued to complain about the administration’s auto industry policies.

He also feuded with Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

By 2022, Musk was spending more time wading into sensitive political and social issues.

More than 250 of Musk’s Twitter exchanges in 2022 mentioned “free speech," “disinformation," “the media" or similar phrases.

That year, Musk offered to buy Twitter. He accused the platform of having a “strong left wing bias" and said that he would soften content moderation in the name of free speech if he bought the platform.

He completed the acquisition in October 2022 in a deal valued at $44 billion. The move won him many admirers among conservatives and critics of big social-media platforms. Several of his most-liked posts of all time pertain to free speech and his acquisition of Twitter, with some receiving millions of likes. His top most-liked in the Journal’s analysis: a joke about “buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in."

The name of the platform appeared in about 900 of his exchanges in 2022. That’s nearly twice as many as mentioned Tesla during the same period. In November of that year, a record 36% of his conversations mentioned Twitter.

In a May 2022 tweet, Musk made his split with Democrats explicit.

Musk said his shift was fueled in part by how Democrats treated him and his companies.

Musk also began expressing more views about international affairs, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine starting in February 2022.

Early on, Musk posted his support for Ukraine, tweeting “Hold Strong." SpaceX’s Starlink, which uses a fleet of satellites to provide internet service, has been a key tool Ukraine has used in its fight with Russia.

Later, he voiced concerns about oversight of the U.S. government’s spending on Ukraine and the risk of nuclear war. Musk drew ire from Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky over a tweet in which he proposed that Ukraine cede the Crimea region to Russia. Musk responded that he still supports Ukraine.

In 2023, Musk replied to, quote-tweeted or retweeted prominent foreign leaders at least 18 times, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Of those exchanges, seven were with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose policies have made him an icon for some on the right.

Musk engaged more frequently than in prior years with accounts focused on political commentary. Among the accounts he engaged with the most since 2023 were @EndWokeness, which Musk replied to, quote-tweeted or retweeted more than 470 times. He had about 450 exchanges on the platform with Alex Lorusso, a conservative political commentator, during that period.

The term “woke" appeared in more than 400 of Musk’s exchanges since 2023 as he criticized liberals, or amplified others who did. In more than 60 of those, Musk posted about the “woke mind virus," his way of labeling what he sees as a herd-like mentality on the left.

Musk grew increasingly occupied by issues at the center of U.S. culture wars over the past two years, such as gender and diversity.

He has said that his opposition to medical treatment for transgender children often known as gender-affirming care was one of the animating issues in his political shift. In a recent podcast, Musk said he felt tricked into signing documents allowing one of his children to have treatment. “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that," he said.

In June 2023, Musk responded to a user who said he had received backlash for rejecting the term “cis," which describes people whose gender identity aligns with their sex at birth.

Musk also ramped up posting about diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, known as DEI, which he called a form of discrimination, writing in December 2023, “DEI must DIE."

Since 2023, more than 1,400 of his exchanges included the terms “DEI," “racist," “trans," “gender," or similar words related to race, gender and sexuality.

Musk also amplified the idea that white people are made to feel guilty about their skin color, replying to a post that included a video of people being asked if they are proud to be white.

As Musk spent more time engaging with political controversies, he also at times amplified inflammatory or conspiratorial content. In 2022, in a later-deleted tweet, he posted a link to an article with salacious and unsubstantiated claims about the attack on lawmaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

In November 2023, Musk responded to a user’s post that espoused an antisemitic conspiracy theory by writing: “You have said the actual truth." Musk has vehemently denied being antisemitic and said he hadn’t meant anything antisemitic by that post. That comment, he said, was “one of the most foolish, if not the most foolish thing, I’ve ever done on the platform."

Since last year, more than 100 of his exchanges on the platform mentioned the billionaire George Soros. Some of his comments about Soros, including a comparison to Jewish X-Men villain Magneto, drew condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League.

Musk also amplified claims that the left is “importing future left-wing voters" through illegal immigration.

This year, illegal immigration has been a focal point of his attacks against Democrats. Musk has called out Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on the issue.

He’s also raised alarms about high levels of immigration abroad, warning that Europe appears to be headed for “civil war" in response to posts from users over the past year citing social unrest. Since January, terms like “illegal immigrants," “migrants," “the border" and similar phrases appeared in more than 900 of Musk’s conversations.

In April, Musk posted, “My politics are (I think) fairly moderate anyway."

By July, Musk was posting often about Trump and Biden, with 15% of his exchanges on X mentioning at least one of their names that month. He declared his support for Trump in a post on X shortly after the former president was shot in a failed assassination attempt.

In recent months, Musk dove into the presidential race, including by hosting Trump on X for a freewheeling conversation that lasted more than two hours.

Musk had told others he planned to contribute around $45 million a month to the Trump-supporting America PAC, the Journal previously reported. Musk later said on X that he is donating at a “much lower level."

The day of the assassination attempt, Musk posted a viral photo of Trump raising his fist in defiance after he was shot. The post garnered roughly 3.4 million likes. It was Musk’s second-most popular post to date.

Ben Warren contributed to this article.

Write to Andrea Fuller at andrea.fuller@wsj.com, Alexa Corse at alexa.corse@wsj.com, John West at john.west@wsj.com and Kara Dapena at kara.dapena@wsj.com