Axios

President-elect Trump and Elon Musk, two billionaires with strikingly similar DNAs, are fusing into a new, powerful governing-media paradigm, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a “Behind the Curtain” column.

Musk, who threw himself into the presidential campaign this past year, has his hands in several Trump projects:

1. He’s helping pick the Cabinet and top White House staff.
2. Trump handed Musk the phone during a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week. Musk is expected to attend Trump’s meeting at Mar-a-Lago this week with Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei.
3. Musk is working on a project that would sit outside the official government to use technology to find trillions in possible budget cuts — his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, in homage to the Musk-friendly cryptocurrency).
4. He’s mobilizing his 204 million followers on his X platform to try to elect dark-horse Senate majority leader candidate Rick Scott, a staunch MAGA ally, in tomorrow’s secret ballot election.

Part 2: Trump and Musk’s backstory