It’s payday for Musk as advertisers return to X

Advertisers are reportedly flooding back to Elon Musk’s X in the US following his unveiling as president-elect Trump’s BFF. IBM, Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney reportedly among them.

This follows a near 10% jump in Tesla’s share price following a Bloomberg report that Trump is planning a federal framework for fully autonomous cars, which Teslas basically are. Tesla is now worth $1.1 trillion with some analysts predicting it will go to $2tn. Musk owns 20.5%.

Musk may be the ultimate tech billionaire (his 54% share in SpaceX is worth over $100bn) but there’s something rather old-style Tammany Hall about this. Tammany Hall was a historic Democrat party political mafia that effectively controlled New York, the East coast and most things in it.

Musk’s relationship with Trump may crash and burn (most of Trump’s do) but anyone that rich is not going to retreat willingly. Those advertisers on X (formerly Twitter) who responded by pulling their ad dollars when Musk advised them to “go fuck themselves” might draw the conclusion that they’re properly fucked.