Politico

Elon Musk just vaulted himself into some troubling historical company.

A bombshell report from The Wall Street Journal this morning revealed that Musk has secretly been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the past two years.

Musk might pitch himself to Americans as an avatar of the future, electrifying the car industry and leading humans to a sci-fi future on Mars. But the way he relates to geopolitics has unsettling echoes in America’s past, putting him in the company of business figures whose international misadventures have almost always been a black mark on their historical records.

Seasoned diplomats and government watchdogs were aghast at the report of Musk’s relationship with Putin, especially given Musk’s possible appointment to an ambiguous-but-sweeping role in a second Trump administration.