Tech billionaire Elon Musk is on a campaign trail blitz as he rallies support for former President Trump, targeting government regulations as he champions the expansion of American businesses and cutting government red tape.
Musk officially endorsed Trump over the summer, when the 45th president survived the first assassination attempt on his life this election cycle, and has since joined the campaign trail in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania to rally support and encourage people to vote. Relying on his decades as a tech visionary and business leader who has personally dealt with tight government regulations, Musk has made cutting red tape a hallmark of his stump speeches and commentary on X.
Early Sunday morning, Musk posted on X that he was ready to reveal to the public a bizarre alleged scheme where his company SpaceX was "forced by the government to kidnap seals."
"Tomorrow, I will tell the story of how SpaceX was forced by the government to kidnap seals, put earphones on them and play sonic boom sounds to see if they seemed upset," Musk posted on Sunday morning.
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Musk's tease came in response to a clip of him saying on Saturday in Pennsylvania that he has a "bunch of nutty stories" related to government overregulation, including how SpaceX had to study the probability of its Starship rocket hitting a whale or shark.
"SpaceX had to do this study to see if Starship would hit a shark. And I'm like... it's a big ocean. There are a lot of sharks. It’s not impossible, but it’s very unlikely. So we said, 'Fine, we’ll do the analysis. Can you give us the shark data?'" he recounted to laughters from the audience. He said the National Marine Fisheries Service ordered SpaceX to carry out the study.
"They were like, 'No, we can’t give you the shark data.' Well, then, OK, we’re in a bit of a quandary. How do we solve this shark probability issue? They said, 'Well, we could give it to our western division, but we don’t trust them.' I’m like, ‘Am I in a comedy sketch here?'" Musk said in the clip.
"Eventually, we got the data and could run the analysis to say, 'Yeah, the sharks are going to be fine.' But they wouldn’t let us proceed with the launch until we did this crazy shark analysis. Then we thought, 'OK, now we’re done.' But then they said, 'What about whales?'" Musk continued.
If re-elected to the White House, Trump said Musk could take a new position as "Secretary of Cost-Cutting" for the federal government.
"He doesn't want to be in the Cabinet," Trump told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo last week on "Sunday Morning Futures." "He just wants to be in charge of cost-cutting."
"We'll have a new position: Secretary of Cost-Cutting. Elon wants to do that, and we have incredible people. He's running a big business. He can't just say, 'I think I'll go into the Cabinet.' Other people can. He can't, but Elon's a little bit different in that sense."
Going back to August, when Musk hosted Trump for an interview on X Spaces, he focused his economic criticisms on government overspending as spurring current inflation woes that have rocked Americans' pocketbooks.
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"A lot of people just don’t understand where inflation comes from. Inflation comes from government overspending because the checks never bounce when it’s written by the government. So if the government spends far more than it brings in, that increases the money supply. If the money supply increases faster than the rate of goods and services, that’s inflation," Musk said during their conversation.
"So really we need to reduce our government spending, and we need to re-examine… I think we need a government efficiency commission to say like, ‘Hey, where are we spending money that’s sensible. Where is it not sensible?’"
Musk officially hit the campaign trail on behalf of Trump's candidacy last week, holding a handful of rallies in Pennsylvania – a place Musk said he knows well, citing his Philadelphia residency while attending the University of Pennsylvania in the 1990s.
While speaking before an audience in Folsom last week, which is located about 20 miles outside of Philadelphia, Musk highlighted how Space X faced a $140,000 fine from the EPA for using drinking water to cool down a launch pad.
"I’ll tell you like a crazy thing, like we got fined $140,000 by the EPA for dumping fresh water on the ground. Drinking water. It’s crazy. I’ll just give you an example of just how crazy it is. And we’re like, ‘Well, we’re using water to cool the launch pad during launch. You know, we’re going to cool the launch pad so it doesn’t overheat. And in excess of caution, we actually brought in drinking water, so clean, super clean water,’" Musk said to the audience.
"And the FAA said, ‘No, you have to pay a $140,000 fine.’ And we’re like, ‘But Starbase is in a tropical thunderstorm area. Sky water falls all the time,’" Musk recounted, referring to SpaceX's headquarters in Texas. "'That is the same as the water we used' So, and it’s like… there’s no harm to anything. And they said, ‘Yeah, but we didn’t have a permit.’ We’re like, ‘You need a permit for fresh water?’" Musk recounted.
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Musk argued that America needs to move from "solving one problem after another," to building industries that "inspire" residents alongside growing innovation, but that "we’re being massively slowed down by regulatory molasses."
Musk's campaign tour has apparently worried Democrats amid Trump's effort to claim the Keystone State.
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Pennsylvania is viewed as the state that will likely determine the final outcome of the election, with both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly zigzagging the state to rally support among city dwellers, suburbanites and farmers alike. Democratic Sen. John Fetterman warned party members to not discount Musk's influence among Pennsylvania voters.
"Not even just that he has endorsed [Trump], but the fact that now he’s becoming an active participant and showing up and doing rallies and things like that," Fetterman told the New York Post, explaining that the enormously successful Tesla and SpaceX CEO is an attractive figure for the kinds of voters Harris needs to win.
"I mean, [Musk] is incredibly successful, and, you know, I think some people would see him as, like, a Tony Stark," said Fetterman, referencing the popular Marvel Comics character. "Democrats, you know, kind of make light of it, or they make fun of him jumping up and down and things like that. And I would just say that they are doing that at our peril."
