THE OLIGARCH ELECTION

Billionaires have long meddled in politics. But never like this.

- TIM MURPHY

IT FEELS STRANGE to suggest that the second-most memorable thing that happened on a stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024 was the former and future president of the United States getting shot in the face. But after Donald Trump's victory on election night, the image that was seared in my mind was that of the world's richest man, Elon Musk, jumping around the same stage a few months later—eyes weirdly vacant, a black MAGA hat perched awkwardly on his head, his legs and arms outstretched in the shape of a knotted and overgrown X.Musk had been a public Trump supporter since the summer, and a not-so-subtle conservative sympathizer for far longer. He was already pouring tens of millions of dollars into an unusual field campaign in key swing states. And he had hosted a glitchy conversation with Trump on X. But the appearance at that rally of a defense contractor who controls more than half the satellites in the night sky, one of the nation's largest electric-vehicle charging networks, and quite possibly the social media app where you might share this article, felt like something ominous and new.Tim Walz—who told a crowd a few weeks after Musk's appearance in Butler that the tech mogul was “skipping around like a dipshit”—was only trying to get one over on his counterpart when he called Musk Trump's “running mate.” But it was not entirely wrong.