Trump and Musk cement ties with trip to Texas for Starship rocket launch

WASHINGTON (AP) For two weeks, Donald Trump has welcomed Elon Musk into his world. Tuesday, it was Elon Musk's turn to welcome the president-elect.

Trump flew to South Texas to watch Musks SpaceX launch a Starship rocket near the Mexican border. Trump listened intently as the world's richest man explained how the test would work and demonstrated it with a model. And then Trump looked up into the bright sky to watch the takeoff.

It didn't go perfectly: the reusable booster didn't return to the launch pad as it did in a previous test last month. Instead, the recall was directed to land in the Gulf of Mexico.

But Trump's presence at the launch was a remarkable display of intimacy between the two men, with implications for American politics, government, foreign policy and even the possibility of humans reaching Mars.

Musk spent about $200 million to help Trump beat Democrat Kamala Harris in the presidential race, and he enjoyed unprecedented access. He advised Trump on nominees for the new administration, participated in the president-elect's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and was chosen to co-chair an advisory committee on reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy.

In addition to political influence, Musk could also benefit personally. SpaceX, his rocket company, has billions of dollars in government contracts and aims to eventually create a colony on Mars. He is also CEO of Tesla, which makes electric vehicles, and has fought with regulators over safety issues related to autonomous driving.

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Trump has the greatest possible respect for those who break the rules and get away with it, said William Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. Musk has demonstrated extraordinary achievements in this regard.

To top it all off, Musk owns the social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, which he has operated as an influential perch to promote Trump and his agenda.

Stop the swamp! he wrote Tuesday, sharing a warning that entrenched interests in Washington are trying to undermine Trump before his inauguration.

Before the election, Musk rejected the idea that he expected favors in exchange for supporting Trump in the presidential race.

There is no quid pro quo, he posted on X in September. With a Trump administration, we can implement major government reform, remove the bureaucratic red tape that is choking the country, and usher in a new era of prosperity.

However, Trump has gone virtually nowhere without Musk in the two weeks since his victory over Harris. Musk joined Trump at a meeting with House Republicans in Washington and sat next to him at an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in New York. The trip to Texas for the rocket launch was only the third time Trump has traveled outside Florida since the election.

As Trump's protective motorcade left the launch site Tuesday evening to return to the airport, one of Musk's angular, shiny Tesla Cybertrucks was nestled amid the formation of black SUVs.

Much of Trump's activity takes place with little public access to the press. Unlike his predecessors, he has chosen not to regularly make his travel plans or events open to journalists.

The relationship between Trump and Musk hasn't always been this close.

Two years ago, Trump was mocking Musk in his stump speeches and Musk was saying it was time for Trump to hang up his hat and sail into the sunset.

Trump would be 82 years old at the end of his term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America, Musk wrote on social media.

But Musk quickly backed Trump after the former president survived an assassination attempt in July. He quickly became a central figure in Trump's orbit, sometimes resembling his running mate more than Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

Trump began boasting about Musk's accomplishments at campaign rallies, such as when the Starships reusable rocket booster returned to the launch tower on a previous occasion and was caught by mechanical arms.

These arms grab him like you grab your baby, just like you grab your little baby. And he hugged him and just put him down, and there he was, Trump said.

Musk was with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort on election night and spent most of the next two weeks there. Trump's granddaughter, Kai Trump, posted a photo of herself with Musk at one of Trump's golf resorts, writing that Musk was achieving uncle status.

Last week, Musk appeared in a gilded ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, sitting in the center of the room as the guest of honor at an event. Trump, in his remarks at the black-tie event, said Musk's IQ was about as high as it gets and praised him as a really good guy.

He launched a rocket three weeks ago, then went to Pennsylvania to campaign because he considered that more important than launching rockets that cost billions of dollars, Trump said.

He joked about Musk's constant presence at Mar-a-Lago, saying: He loves it there. I can't get him out of here.

He added: And you know what, I love having it here.

Musk said of the election results: “The public has given us a mandate that could not be clearer.

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Price reported from New York.

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