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Kai Trump’s tweet featuring a family photo with Elon Musk, but without Melania, has caught the attention of the internet. The image hints at Musk’s now closer ties to Trump.
Kai Trump shares picture of Donald Trump with Elon Musk (Photo: @KaiTrumpGolfs)
Hours after Donald Trump won the US presidential elections, his 17-year-old granddaughter, Kai Trump, has hinted that Elon Musk is now family to the President-elect. An image posted by Kai on X showed Donald Trump with several others of his family, including Musk, who was seen holding his son. The image was captioned “The whole squad”.
However, other than the presence of the billionaire, what caught the netizen’s attention was the absence of Trump’s wife Melania.
A similar image was also posted by tech tycoon Elon Musk, showing him all smiles beside Trump, while many others clicked them.
Musk, the world’s richest man, massively backed Trump in the presidential race against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, which has granted the billionaire entrepreneur extraordinary influence to help his companies secure favourable government treatment.
Musk contributed at least $119 million to a pro-Trump spending group, federal records show and tirelessly touted the former president at the critical late stage of his campaign.
He even opened a giveaway to voters in seven battleground states who signed a petition to support free speech and gun rights, which registered voters later claimed to be a fraud.
It should be noted that Musk’s business interests – from Tesla electric vehicles to SpaceX rockets and Neuralink brain chips – depend heavily on government regulation, subsidies or policy.
The fortunes of Tesla could rise or fall depending on Trump’s treatment of the diverse array of subsidies, policies and regulatory schemes for electric and autonomous vehicles. Democratic administrations have historically championed many such pro-Electric Vehicle (EV) policies, with Tesla’s support.
Musk could potentially now protect them despite the Republican party’s traditional rejection of EVs – and Trump’s ridicule of Joe Biden’s EV policy on the campaign trail.
For Tesla, Musk’s goals include getting the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), its primary federal safety regulator, to hold off on potential enforcement actions involving the safety of Tesla’s current driver-assistance systems, called “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving,” news agency Reuters quoted a person familiar with the matter.