Elon Musk’s much-ballyhooed, glitch-riddled Monday interview with Donald Trump was just the latest episode in the tech mogul’s enduring crush on the former president. Musk, no stranger to controversy, has been unabashed in his backing of Trump in the 2024 presidential election — and he was instrumental in returning Trump to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Every election cycle, celebrities try to put their thumb on the scale in favor of their candidate. And while a new study shows that celebrities like Megan Thee Stallion or Kid Rock can influence an election by drumming up voter enthusiasm, it is the extremely wealthy and powerful CEOs — like Musk — who can wield outsize power in political campaigns.
Like all American citizens, Musk and other CEOs have the right to get involved in American politics, from funding super PACs to working behind the scenes to drum up the vote to giving them an audience on their platforms. But that engagement can come at a cost.
History provides a note of caution: TIME founder Henry Luce fully invested himself in promoting the campaign of General Dwight Eisenhower. His full-throated support of Eisenhower, unusual for a media conglomerate, brought short-term benefits — giving him access to Eisenhower in the White House. But ultimately, his enthusiastic embrace of Eisenhower had a detrimental impact on his magazine’s journalistic reputation.
Luce created TIME in 1923 because he saw that America lacked a national news platform. As America’s first national newsmagazine, TIME was something entirely new in American journalism and it caught on, quickly gaining hundreds of thousands of subscribers on its way to eventually tens of millions. It also had a real interest in the presidency. TIME was groundbreaking in its reporting of the daily movements of the president, and even created a popular section called “The President’s Week.”
Given his interest in the presidency, Luce wanted good relations with the president, something that eluded him throughout the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He and Roosevelt disliked each other — intensely — and Luce worked repeatedly to defeat him, supporting unsuccessful candidates like Alf Landon against Roosevelt in 1936. He failed each time, but that just made him more committed. Even after Roosevelt died, Luce continued to nurse his grudge, declaring, “It is my duty to go on hating him.” The relationship with Roosevelt’s replacement Harry Truman was not much better.
In 1952, Luce saw an opportunity to end 20 years of Democratic dominance of the White House. Luce believed one-party supremacy was not only bad for himself personally (because Roosevelt was his enemy), but for the country as well. So in 1952, Luce went all in for Eisenhower, using his position as media magnate to support Ike in a variety of ways.
Even before Eisenhower was an official candidate, Luce met with him in Paris — and fell in immediate, political love. Luce reported how impressed he was with Ike, including his personal appreciation for the “sound of the man’s voice” and the “the twinkle” in his “brightest blue eyes.”
Today, there’s an expectation, not always met, that journalists be nonpartisan in their coverage. Things were similar in 1952, but even though his publications were ostensibly nonpartisan, Luce directed his magazines TIME and Life to write favorably about the five-star general, including a Life editorial entitled “The Case for Ike.”
Later, Eisenhower said Life’s editorial helped encourage him to enter the race. Once Ike was in, TIME was so favorable to Eisenhower that his campaign manager, Henry Cabot Lodge, would hand out copies of its issues to many of the people he met with.
In another unusual move, Luce provided campaign staff for Ike from his own team, including speechwriters Emmet Hughes and C.D. Jackson, and campaign adviser John Knox Jessup. Hughes wrote the most famous line of the Eisenhower campaign, “If elected, I shall go to Korea.” This line was intended to demonstrate that Ike would focus on ending the conflict in Korea — and it worked, helping propel him to victory against Democrat Adlai Stevenson, garnering 55 percent of the popular vote and sweeping the Electoral College.
Luce also helped create the vision for the campaign. He invited John Foster Dulles to describe a Republican foreign policy vision in a Life article. This article, “A Policy of Boldness,” became the basis for Eisenhower’s foreign policy plank in the Republican platform, and Dulles became Eisenhower’s secretary of State.
When Ike defeated Stevenson, Luce wired to friends: “Victory, it’s wonderful.” And he was soon to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Luce’s wife, Claire Boothe Luce, joined the administration as ambassador to Italy. Luce got to see his vision implemented on the foreign policy front, and he was able to pass on his policy advice to administration officials like Dulles, Hughes, Jackson and his wife (Jessup chose not to join the administration). Luce was also pleased that Ike proved to be a good president, presiding over a period of peace and prosperity. Accordingly, Luce made sure to tout Eisenhower’s accomplishments to his magazines’ 30 million readers.
Luce benefited from having Eisenhower in the White House, but he also incurred costs. TIME staffers grumbled about working for “Eisenhower’s mouthpiece.” He responded to internal criticism by telling staffers, “I am your boss. I guess that means I can fire any of you,” which did not endear him to the team.
Meanwhile, TIME took a reputational hit in the Eisenhower years for being too pro-Ike. A joke went around that “Time was even-handed during election years: Half the time it praised the Republicans, and half the time it damned the Democrats.” Intellectuals turned on TIME, and the publication came to be viewed, dismissively, as a middle-brow publication. Luce retired in 1964 and died just three years later at 68. Time became more liberal under his successors than under Luce and is now a shadow of what it once was, but that’s due more to the internet than anything Luce-related.
As for Musk, he clearly likes doing things differently, something he noted in a 2021 Saturday Night Live appearance: “To anyone I’ve offended, I just want to say: I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?” One could argue that approach has worked for him this far, making him one of the richest people in human history. Still, Musk should take heed: Luce and his empire suffered real consequences from his political involvement, and blowback today could be even greater. Twitter/X took a hit when Musk bought it in 2022; both advertising and engagement are down significantly since he took the reins. Still, X has 50 million U.S. users (and 300 million worldwide); his endorsement of Trump could drive away unhappy users. Musk clearly wants to expand X’s reach, and being persona non grata to large swaths of the country could make that mission that much harder.
Other Musk products, including Tesla or Space X, could potentially suffer as well. Tesla needs individual consumers. But he also needs government contracts, which could be harder to come by if purchasers dislike his politics. Michael Jordan put it well: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” Well, Democrats buy cars, too. And on the government procurement side, both Tesla and Space X could potentially see fewer contracts from a vengeful Kamala Harris administration.
A third issue is the problem of selective enforcement. There are so many regulations on the books that not every company gets hit for every violation, but companies under additional scrutiny could be. Since President Joe Biden has come to office, Musk businesses have been subject to probes from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Justice Department, the National Labor Relations Board, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Federal Trade Commission, just to name a few. This does not mean that Biden personally ordered these probes, but as The Wall Street Journal editorial board observed, “We doubt any order from on high has been sent, but it doesn’t need to be when a figure becomes Progressive Enemy No. 1.” Add to this the costs on the international front, as European regulators are also probing Musk’s use of X to promote Trump.
Musk is surely aware of these challenges, but this history provides additional context. As Henry Luce learned, too strong a bet on politics can be harmful — even if you end up winning your bet.
The Media Mogul and the President: A Cautionary Tale for Elon Musk
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