Musk far more ‘influential’ than Trump online – WaPo
Messages that Elon Musk posts on X, the platform he purchased for $44 billion in 2022, have received far more viewership than those of any other politically-involved users, including President-elect Donald Trump, the Washington Post reported this week.
The newspaper, which generally favors the Democratic Party, has tracked engagements since July, the month when the billionaire endorsed Trump for president. It said it has been monitoring posts hourly for 48 hours after publication to assess the “influence” that X users have on their audience.
According to its analysis, Musk’s messages have received a total of 133 billion views during the monitoring period, which is 15 times more than Trump’s posts on the platform and more than 16 times more than the combined reach of all accounts belonging to members of the incoming Congress. In short, the entrepreneur “eclipses” all others in terms of influence, the Post suggested.
Trump was suspended from Twitter in the wake of the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot, before Musk bought the company and changed its name to X. The president-elect has since moved the bulk of his political messaging to his own platform, Truth Social. Musk reinstated Trump’s X account after purchasing the microblogging network.
WaPo has suggested that Trump’s presence elsewhere doesn’t significantly affect its analysis. He has “only 8.4 million followers there compared to his 96 million on X,” it said.
Critics of Trump have been sounding the alarm over what they perceive as the undue influence that Musk has on the Republican politician and the future policies of his administration. The billionaire has been closely involved with the transition process and has publicly weighed in on electoral politics with his online commentary on appointments.
Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker and a key figure in the Democratic establishment, described Trump as the billionaire’s “puppet” on Thursday, while reacting to the failure of Congress to pass a stop-gap funding bill this week.
Musk has led the online charge against the 1,547-page proposal, released on Tuesday, branding it “criminal,” “outrageous,” “unconscionable,” and ultimately “one of the worst bills ever written.” Democratic lawmakers opposed an alternative bill pitched by Trump. Friday is the deadline for allocating more money to keep the federal government running.
