Donald Trump's new BFF isn't a person you would expect, given their history, but politics make for strange bedfellows when space is on the line.
Donald Trump seems to quickly fall out of and fall into friendships, so perhaps it’s not really a surprise at all who is new BFF is, even if he didn’t have kind things to say about the newly sworn in president before the election. Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla, once said that Trump was “not the right guy” just before the election in which Trump ended up prevailing, but they appear to have patched those differences, CNN is reporting.
Trump named Musk to his team of business advisers, a surprising move for the notoriously thin-skinned businessman who is known for holding grudges against people who don’t say nice things about him. Musk has also twice visited the Trump Tower, once as part of a larger meeting with tech CEOs and again in a private meeting with Trump’s top aides. And investors are noticing.
“Elon Musk has an important line of communication to Donald Trump through his role as a strategic advisor to the President-elect,” Adam Jonas, an analyst with Morgan Stanley, wrote in an investor note as reported by CNN. “We believe this level of coordination with the new administration could actually evolve into greater strategic value than with the prior administration.”
It may simply make business sense to work with Trump, who will now be in control of the government contracts that SpaceX enjoys with NASA for space shipments. In fact, he might even make more money with Trump than he did under the Obama Administration due to Trump’s interest in space exploration and the mission to Mars, something that is near and dear to Musk’s heart. They also agree on strengthening U.S. manufacturing and job growth.
Of course, Trump’s election will mean wholesale changes to how NASA operates, especially when it comes to climate change. As soon as he was sworn in as the 45th president, the climate change section of the White House was replaced with an energy plan that would take NASA pretty much in the opposite direction as under Obama.
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