In a two-hour press conference in Rome, Italy on Thursday, 9 January, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy was grilled by the local press about her relationship with President-elect Donald Trump of the United States and his billionaire ally Elon Musk.
She seems to have an especially cordial relationship with Musk. The two have met even prior to the billionaire formerly endorsing President Trump; and had a public meeting without the Former President as well in September 2024 (Former President of Hungary Katalin Novák, however, was present with them).
When asked about Musk’s influence over global politics, PM Meloni asked back: ‘Is the problem that he is rich and influential, or that he’s not left-wing?’ She then went on to say she believes Musk is not dangerous to democracy; and that election interference happens when ‘wealthy people use resources to finance parties and associations around the world to influence policies, as in the case of George Soros,’ as quoted by POLITICO.
She also brought up the case of Donald Trump being banned from all major social media platforms in January 2021 in the wake of the Capitol riots as an example of malicious election interference by billionaires. Musk, on the other hand, is an avid proponent of free speech and his X platform rarely bans any users.
The Difference Between Musk and Soros
Elon Musk publicly endorsed Donald Trump after his assassination attempt in July 2024. Shortly after his election win in November 2024, the President-elect announced that Musk will be co-heading the new Department of Government Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy.
In the wake of these developments, some on the left accused right-wing commentators and influencers of hypocrisy, as they have been decrying George Soros’ influence on politics, but are now welcoming Musk’s.
First off, Soros has always been mostly criticized for the destructive policies the is advocating for, not for the mere fact that he is a billionaire donating to politicians. He typically has been the largest individual donor for the Democratic Party in the US. Other major donors, however, never got nearly the same level of scrutiny and disdain from the people on the right.
Soros’ Open Society Foundations gives international support to illegal migrants to try to fight the legal system in sovereign nations that try to deport them. His Media Matters’ main purpose is to harass advertisers of media companies hosting right-wing content and to manufacture negative press about right-wing public figures. He has also funded the campaigns of Attorney Generals across the United States who are lenient with violent criminals, leading to an increase in crime in the major cities of the US.
On the other hand, Musk, as we wrote above, is an avid advocate for free speech and a major critic of mass illegal migration. Unlike Soros, he has now been appointed to an official government position as well.
There are also major differences in how the two billionaires have amassed their immense wealth.
Musk was one of the six co-founders of the online payment service provider PayPal in 1998. When eBay bought the company in 2002, he got paid $175.8 million for his stake. The next year, in 2003, he founded Tesla, Inc, which went on to become the world’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicles (it has since lost that position to the Chinese BYD). Musk is also the largest stakeholder in the space tech company SpaceX.
In other words, Musk made his wealth by creating new, innovative goods and services for a large consumer base.
Soros, by contrast, became rich as a stock and foreign currency speculator. While his Quantum Fund, founded in 1973, averaged a 20 per cent annual return for three decades, which is orders of magnitude above the performance of an average hedge fund, it did not create any value for the companies or the consumers. In 1992 Soros’s hedge fund infamously shorted the British Pound. The collapse of the currency brought great economic hardship for the people of the United Kingdom for years.
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