Election Day is here for Elon Musk—who isn’t on the ballot

“The second Trump Presidency will be the most fun America has had in a while," he posted to his more than 200 million followers this past week on his social-media platform X, which appears to be putting its thumb on the scale of its algorithm to pump Trump to users. “It’s gonna be awesome!"

There are the ramifications for his businesses, SpaceX and Tesla, and the regulatory headaches he decries. But more than that, there is his ego, the more than $118 million he has poured into his pro-Trump super PAC, the hours he has spent on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, where he is making his stand for his Republican.

Through it all, Musk has sounded and acted more and more like a politician. So naturally, he has been asked about his own political ambitions.

“I just want to know if you are considering running in 2028," a woman asked at a recent campaign event near Pittsburgh that Musk held.

The world’s richest man demurred. As an immigrant from South Africa, he noted, he can’t be president of the U.S. Plus, as he likes to say, he doesn’t even like politics. “I don’t actually want to be president—just to be clear," Musk said to credulous laughter. “I want to build rockets and cars."

Still, Musk sure looked joyful on the political stage, bouncing up and down next to Trump at a rally last month in Butler, Pa., and addressing thousands of attendees at Madison Square Garden.

At the Manhattan event, Musk donned a black MAGA hat that he suggested was gothic, while critics said it was a font favored by Nazis—perhaps the perfect snapshot of a contentious election that isn’t being framed simply as Republicans vs. Democrats but as good vs. evil.

And, to be clear, each side sees the other as the devil.

At times, it has felt like Musk’s politicalization was fueled by aggrievement. He has fumed over his perceived slights by the Biden administration for failing to properly credit him for the electric-car industry’s success; stewed over his son transitioning to become his daughter; and chafed at political correctness that, in his opinion, has run amok.

Trump wasn’t his first choice (nor maybe even his second), but, ever the pragmatist, Musk got on board with the one viable candidate who wasn’t President Biden. (When Harris, the vice president, took over the top of the ticket that animus to administration simply carried over.)

The failed assassination attempt against Trump in July flipped Musk’s behind-the-scenes support of the former president into a full-blown public embrace, turning on his powerful echoverse of fanbois and increasing his already prodigious tweet storms into Category 5 ragers.

By October, Musk was posting on average more than 100 tweets a day, about 3,400 postings and other activities that month, far and away his biggest month ever, according to my colleague Andrea Fuller, who tracks such things.

His tweets have been celebrated by his supporters as promoting free speech and shining the light on the problems of illegal immigration and voter fraud. Critics have decried the flood of misleading or incorrect information—another snapshot of a contentious election where, at times, even basic facts seemed in dispute.

Musk’s place in it all, center stage, both in real life at campaign rallies and on social media, was the perfect bookmark to this past week’s second anniversary of taking control of Twitter in San Francisco.

His acquisition of the financially troubled platform was motivated not by making money but about ensuring free speech, he has often said, especially for conservatives who, he claimed, were being improperly silenced.

As Twitter’s new owner, Musk slashed jobs, changed its name to X and moved its headquarters to Texas, away from the infectious woke mind virus that he says is so prevalent in the City by the Bay.

Those in San Francisco watched in disgust. But those in Pennsylvania watched in awe.

Trump’s plan to appoint Musk to a task force to recommend how and where to slash government spending and regulation has ignited excitement among Republicans who’ve long believed Washington, D.C., has grown too big and needs taming.Musk, as Trump’s potential “Secretary of Cost-Cutting," has suggested in recent days that he would cut about one-third of federal spending, a figure so ambitious it makes his plans for colonizing Mars in the next generation seem reasonable.

Leading into the final days of the campaign, Musk continued to anger his critics and excite his fans with his political discourse. On one occasion, he agreed with an X user who said Trump’s plans for mass deportations and Musk’s ideas for slashing government workers would trigger a severe overreaction in the economy with markets tumbling before recovering as a healthier economy.

“Sounds about right," Musk responded.

But even though that generated some headlines, it was soon overtaken by Biden calling Trump supporters “garbage," and Musk was quickly retweeting images of Trump riding around in a garbage truck as part of the latest attention-grabbing stunt.

“Genius-level trolling!!" Musk tweeted.

It has been a norms-busting run for Musk, who upended the auto business with his electric cars, the aerospace industry with his reusable rockets, and telecommunication networks with his low-orbit satellites.

His debut in political campaigning was marked by handing out $1 million a day to random people who signed his petition supporting free speech and gun rights, even as legal experts questioned the legality of the lottery because the effort was essentially providing an incentive for registering voters in battleground states.

On the campaign trail, where people chanted his name and shouted they loved him, Musk navigated some of the thorniest political questions—from how to handle tensions in the Middle East to his position on abortion.

Listening to him, one can’t help but wonder what Musk is really hoping for after Tuesday’s results are announced.

Despite his protests to the “running" question, Musk seems to be angling for something much more powerful than being a volunteer accountant.

So, yes, that lady’s question made sense. She wasn’t alone.

Even before Musk was barnstorming Pennsylvania, he was positioning himself as a statesman of sorts. So much so that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited with Musk at the Tesla factory outside of San Francisco last year, asked what the tycoon would do if he was U.S. president.

“Well," Netanyahu caught himself, “you can’t be president of the U.S. the last time I checked."“Not officially," Musk interjected with a chuckle.