Elon Musk, a key megadonor in the 2024 election, has apparently decided he can’t risk being away from President-elect Donald Trump for more than a few days at a time. To that end, he has since Election Day mainly resided in a cottage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, according to a report from The New York Times.
The resort cottage, which is named Banyan and sits a mere few hundred feet from the main residence, ordinarily rents for $2,000 a night. It’s not known whether Musk has paid (or expects to pay) for his many sleepovers in the past two months, or if Trump is accommodating him as a personal guest, as many of Musk’s friends in Silicon Valley do when he visits their homes. But Trump has been known to charge exorbitantly for stays at his properties when he has the opportunity. During his many visits to Mar-a-Lago and his hotels in his first term as president, for instance, he billed the Secret Service as much as five times the government rate for agents traveling with him and his family. Of course, Musk, who’s worth a reported $429 billion, shouldn’t have any trouble covering inflated charges.
Musk’s continued proximity to Trump has been a source of mockery, tension, and speculation as the world’s richest man seeks to push through his personal agenda in Trump’s second term. Less than two weeks after the election, Musk reportedly had a “massive blowup” with a Trump advisor at a Mar-a-Lago dinner over Cabinet picks. His outsize influence over the incoming administration led to grumbling among some MAGA insiders and Democratic taunts about Musk being the actual president — comments that Trump, ever covetous of the spotlight, has publicly attempted to push back against.
Yet Trump also appeared to follow Musk’s lead in opposing a funding deal to avert a government shutdown earlier this month, releasing a statement condemning the bipartisan bill only after Musk repeatedly attacked it on his website X, formerly Twitter. (The House was able, at the last minute, to pass a revised bill that stripped out much of the money originally earmarked for child cancer research, provisions cracking down on junk fees from hotels and ticket sellers, and reforms that would have required so-called pharmacy benefit managers to pass on drug cost savings to insurance plans.) Trump also sided with Musk in a recent schism between the billionaire’s Big Tech clique and anti-immigration MAGA influencers over hiring foreign workers through the H-1B visa program.
And, in a social media post two days after Christmas that was intended to be private (as Trump’s own staff reportedly confirmed), the soon-to-be leader of the free world awkwardly beseeched the Tesla and SpaceX CEO to return to Mar-a-Lago after a brief absence during the holiday. “Where are you?” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “When are you coming to the ‘Center of the Universe,’ Mar-a-Lago. Bill Gates asked to come, tonight. We miss you and x! New Year’s Eve is going to be AMAZING!!! DJT” The “x” Trump missed was evidently Musk’s 4-year-old son, X Æ A-Xii, one of two children — of the at least 11 Musk has — who have stayed with their father at the club.
With just weeks until Trump’s inauguration, Musk is indeed likely to return to his Palm Beach bachelor pad to sit in on more meetings and calls, seeking any personal advantage during the transition of presidential power. His new commission with pharma businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has been busy proposing how to gut agencies and slash regulations in order to benefit their own businesses, and those of other friends. It makes perfect sense that Musk — however much he enjoys dining alongside Trump day in and out — would want to ensure that his investment of a quarter-billion dollars in the 2024 campaign pays those dividends.
At the same time, Musk’s political interests have drifted somewhat. Of late, when he’s not allegedly demonetizing the Trump allies who disagree with him on X, he has trumpeted his support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has connections to neo-Nazis. Musk now contends that the AfD alone can “save” Germany, and on Monday declared on X that the party “is going to win an epic victory!” The German government has accused Musk of trying to influence its federal election in February.
That meddling should come as no surprise after a Trump comeback that insiders complain Musk has claimed undue credit for. Still, prioritizing an election abroad instead of U.S. policy in the next two months could further complicate his delicate and co-dependent bromance with Trump. Whatever happens, Musk’s final tab for the long stay at Mar-a-Lago is sure to tell the story.
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