While President-elect Donald Trump chooses his Cabinet secretaries, speaks with foreign leaders and makes plans for when he takes office in January, the richest man in the world is often in the room, too.
Elon Musk — who is reportedly in direct contact with Russian leader Vladimir Putin — joined Trump on a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this month. He’s helping vet executive nominees. When Trump met with House Republicans this week, Musk tagged along, too. And he’ll soon co-lead a commission on government efficiency, a job he hopes to use to implement drastic reforms and spending cuts.
Conflicts of interest abound: Musk’s businesses receive government contracts, and his employees frequently interact with federal agencies as they try to comply with regulations and permitting processes. The Biden administration has treated Musk and his companies like a “nation state” given their sprawling government interests, as NOTUS reported.
In interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers, Republicans told NOTUS they were glad Musk is advising Trump. They pointed to his business chops, having turned a start-up space company into a global heavyweight. They broadly agreed that Musk is brilliant, dismissed concerns about any conflicts of interest, shut down questions about his conversations with Putin and expressed hope that Musk could actually succeed in cutting government spending.
“I have zero concern about that,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican, told NOTUS this week when asked about Musk’s reported interactions with Putin.
“He can talk to Vladimir Putin,” Gimenez said nonchalantly. “I’m sure he talks to Xi Jinping, too, because he’s got business interests over there. But no, I don’t have concerns about that.”
Gimenez, who has supported military assistance to Ukraine, said he trusts Musk because “he’s a true patriot.”
The Wall Street Journal reported in late October that Musk has been in regular communication with Putin since 2022, including personal conversations and discussions about geopolitics. On one occasion, according to the report, Putin asked Musk not to deploy Starlink internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Musk didn’t comment for that story, and a spokesperson for Musk’s social media company, X, did not respond to a request for comment from NOTUS this week on The Journal’s article.
“I don’t know that you can restrict international business people from talking to any of our adversaries if they want to talk to them,” Rep. Rick Allen of Georgia told NOTUS.
Allen even hopes Musk can be a peacemaker: “You never know how some of these folks can talk some sense into somebody else, even when they’re bad people. And he’s very well respected around the world. It may be that he can talk Putin into saying, ‘Hey, enough bloodshed, we’re pulling out of Ukraine.’”
Rep. Mike Lawler of New York shared similar views.
“He’s the richest guy in the world. It doesn’t surprise me that other world leaders are in communication,” Lawler told NOTUS. “Obviously the president-elect is certainly entitled to speak with whomever he wants in terms of advice and counsel that he receives.”
Trump joked to GOP lawmakers this week that Musk’s presence at Mar-a-Lago is so ubiquitous these days that he can’t seem to get rid of him. That doesn’t seem to have raised any red flags for Republican members.
Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, said Musk’s business interests — and how they might intersect with his work in Trump’s White House — will already be on the incoming administration’s radar.
“You need some of your best and brightest having an impact on how we’re going to structure society,” he said. “So I have no problem with that.”
“Elon’s doing great work trying to shake things up, and that’s important,” Roy added.
California Rep. John Duarte is also optimistic.
“I’m very happy to see an innovative approach with two top business leaders,” he said of the government efficiency commission. “I’m very interested to see what he does.”
And Sen. Lindsey Graham said he definitely blames Putin for the war in Ukraine and he may have areas of disagreement with Musk, but he considers Musk “a friend.”
“I think he can be very helpful in trying to reform the government,” Graham told NOTUS.
“The guy is very bright, and if he can help us through a budget deficit mess that nobody’s been able to solve in the last 20 years, let’s at least give the guy a chance,” South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds said.
The commission Musk will co-run with Vivek Ramaswamy isn’t expected to be created by Congress and may not have much authority. It may operate more as an advisory council than an arm of the government with a meme-inspired acronym for a name: the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Rounds also said he is confident that America’s current rules against self-dealing by government officials are enough to meet the moment.
“As long as the laws are being followed, we should be OK,” he said.
Ethics experts are less optimistic. The role would seemingly give Musk influence with a range of agencies that directly affect his own business prospects and competitors. It wouldn’t only test the laws of ethical governance — it might break them completely.
“The legal answer is: There are guardrails that exist,” Donald Sherman, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told NOTUS. “The practical answer is that those guardrails will be stressed, if not absolutely dismantled, as we have seen in former President Trump’s first term.”
“I would never be mistaken in believing that compliance is a priority for President-elect Trump,” he added.
Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee isn’t worried.
“There’s always conflicts of interest,” he said when asked about Musk.
Democratic lawmakers say they’ll try to exercise oversight, even though they won’t control either chamber of Congress next year.
“The prospects for corruption and self-dealing are acute,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island told NOTUS. Members of Congress will keep a “watchful eye,” he said.
And Sen. Tim Kaine said he has concerns about the situation, but he’s “not surprised.”
“This is who Trump hangs out with,” he said with a shrug.
Kaine thinks Democratic lawmakers may not have to worry about Musk for too long: “Elon Musk also has an extremely short attention span,” he told NOTUS. “I imagine that he would be interested in this for a very brief moment in time, and then he would be moving off to doing something else.”
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS. Ben T.N. Mause is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.