Elon Musk ‘living in cottage on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate’
World’s richest man whose money helped secure election victory ‘drops in at dinners and listens into calls with US president-elect’
Cameron Henderson
31 December 2024 8:14pm GMT
Elon Musk has reportedly been living in a cottage on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and dropping in on dinners hosted by the president-elect.
The Tesla billionaire has planted himself on Mr Trump’s doorstep by staying at a property several hundred feet away from the main house at the president-elect’s resort complex, The New York Times reported.
Mr Trump is said to have bragged to people that Mr Musk, the world’s richest man, is renting Banyan cottage – one of several smaller properties available for rent on the president-elect’s sprawling Palm Beach estate.
It is unclear how much Mr Musk will pay for the cottage, which has previously hosted former House speaker John Boeher, but the property has reportedly been rented in the past for at least $2,000 a night.
Mr Musk, who played a key role in the president-elect’s winning campaign and has been rewarded with an advisory role in the new administration, has allegedly used his proximity to Mr Trump to drop in on dinners, including a recent one with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
The X owner injected more than $250 million into the president-elect’s campaign and wielded the power of his social media network to help win voters.
He has since ensconced himself in Mr Trump’s inner circle, attending personal meetings at the Mar-a-Lago teahouse, sitting in on phone calls with world leaders including Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, and spending hours with the president-elect in his private office, the newspaper reported.
Employees from Mr Musk’s various businesses are also said to have played an integral role in the transition, helping to vet prospective candidates for senior administrative positions at the team’s West Palm Beach headquarters.
Mr Musk allegedly moved into the Mar-a-Lago cottage around election day, when he was pictured watching the votes come in alongside Mr Trump’s family, and has variously been accompanied by two of his children, their nannies and one of the mothers of his children, Shivon Zilis, who worked at his brain implant company Neuralink.
Other members of Mr Trump’s inner circle alleged to have been put up in cottages at Mar-a-Lago since the election include JD Vance, the vice president-elect, who has reportedly been a frequent visitor to Palm Beach during the transition period.
Mr Musk is said to have developed a reputation around the club for his exacting requests, such as wanting meals outside of normal kitchen hours.
On Friday, in a post on Truth Social that appeared intended as a private message to Mr Musk, Mr Trump wrote: “Where are you? When are you coming to the ‘Center of the Universe,’ Mar-a-Lago. Bill Gates asked to come, tonight. We miss you and x! New Year’s Eve is going to be AMAZING!!! DJT.”
Mr Musk scored another major nod of approval in recent days after Mr Trump sided with him in a row over skilled migrant visas that threatened to split his election-winning coalition.
Such is Mr Musk’s influence, the president-elect felt compelled to dispel rumours that the tech billionaire is the real power behind the incoming administration, telling a conservatives event last week: “No, he’s not taking the presidency.”
As co-chairman of the new Department of Government Efficiency, the Tesla and Space X boss has floated plans to fire hundreds of thousands of civil servants and close entire agencies in a bid to slash federal spending.
In recent weeks, he has tapped into a surprising new wellspring of support for his ideas from centrist and Left-wing figures such as senators John Fetterman and Bernie Sanders, who have endorsed Mr Musk’s plans to cut government waste.
Sen Fetterman, a senator from Pennsylvania, recently applauded Mr Musk for having “made our economy and our nation better”. Mr Musk responded that it was “hard not to like” the senator.
It comes as new data show Mr Musk’s media influence dwarfs that of his tech rivals.
This year, traffic on articles about the world’s richest man was almost triple that of stories about the next nine most-read-about chief executives combined, Axios reported.
Mr Musk has also wielded his influence in international affairs, repeatedly sniping at Sir Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister – most recently claiming “very few” businesses will want to invest in Britain under “the current administration”.
Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, used his New Year’s Eve address to reproach Mr Musk for calling the country’s president an “anti-democratic tyrant”.
It comes after Mr Musk, who has enthusiastically endorsed anti-establishment parties across the West, wrote an opinion piece for a conservative newspaper hailing the hard-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as the country’s “last spark of hope”.
“It is you, the citizens, who will determine how things will play out in Germany in the future,” Mr Scholz said in his annual speech. “This will not be decided by the owners of social media.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics ... go-estate/
