Analysis: Musk plays politics abroad as world leaders brace for Trump’s return | CNN Politics

Analysis: Musk plays politics abroad as world leaders brace for Trump’s return | CNN Politics

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Musk (right) has waged an angry and predominantly one-way feud with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Reuters/Getty Images

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He’s also previewing the international disruption that likely lies in store when the president-elect returns to the White House in two weeks and the potential conflicts of interest ahead. That’s because the Tesla and SpaceX pioneer will not simply be a powerful free agent — but an inner circle adviser to the new US government at the head of the Department of Government Efficiency. It’s therefore going to be hard to know where Musk’s policy ends and official US foreign policy starts.

To foreigners, his attacks on elected officials with whom he disagrees risk coming across as an attempt by a future US government to interfere in the politics of fellow democracies and sovereign nations to destabilize their governments.

And his moves beg the question of whether he’s working at Trump’s direction, is seen by the president-elect as a useful vanguard of disruption or could soon end up irking the 47th president as he tries to put his stamp on the world.

“Will Musk be carrying out Trump’s foreign policy agenda, acting as a personal ambassador of Trump to everywhere?” said Lindsay Gorman, managing director and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. “Or will Musk be advancing his own vision for global affairs, which may align with Trump in some ways, but not in others. And then what will be the power dynamics between those two?”

Trump’s willingness to tolerate Musk’s fierce attacks on allied leaders is also a sign that the coming months could be even more rocky for America’s friends than his first term. That reality played out Monday when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation.  Trudeau had long since squandered the trust of Canadians and his own Liberal Party. But Trump’s threats of imposing a 25% tariff exacerbated the political crisis in Ottawa and may have hastened the departure of an antagonist Trump branded the “governor” of America’s 51st state.

The apparent sense of freedom that Trump and Musk feel in playing politics abroad is also a marker of the self-confidence in MAGA world ahead of Trump’s inauguration. They’re demonstrating a belief that their strength allows them to bully smaller countries and may augur a new and brasher incarnation of “America First.”

Musk’s attacks — conveyed to his 211 million followers on X — have snapped the patience of the leaders of some of America’s closest traditional allies and stoked already elevated transatlantic tensions ahead of Trump’s second term.

— British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has been targeted by Musk for weeks, warned the SpaceX owner had crossed “a line” after he said the British minister responsible for safeguarding children should be jailed and was an apologist for rape.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has come under fire from Elon Musk over a historic sex abuse case in the United Kingdom.

Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

Related article UK leader hits back at Elon Musk’s ‘lies’ over handling of child sex abuse scandal

— French President Emmanuel Macron accused Musk of fueling a new “international reactionary movement” and intervening in elections.

— Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said it was “worrying” that a man with such power was so directly involved in the affairs of other countries.

— The German government has already criticized the multi-billionaire for backing a far-right pro-Russia party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), in upcoming elections. Musk will host the party’s leader in an interview on X this week.

The resentment provoked by Musk reflects the core ideology of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. He is going after establishment politicians and seeking to promote far-right, outsider populists whose views and temperaments mirror those of the president-elect. In Europe, as in the United States, many voters have become resentful of governments they believe have failed to improve their economic situations and to stem immigration.

To many Americans, Musk is simply exercising his First Amendment rights. But in Europe, a continent haunted by the horror of far-right extremism, his support for radical populism is seen by many leaders as offensive and less an example of free speech than an attempt to stifle freedoms and democracy.

If there’s a strategy in Musk’s rabble rousing, it’s that opposition forces in these countries are far more in line with Trump’s anti-immigration and anti-free trade instincts than the leaders who are currently in place. And Trump may be hoping to promote political interlocutors who would be more sympathetic to him.

In France, for instance, the far-right National Rally party (formerly known as the National Front) of Marine Le Pen has its best chance yet in 2027 to win in the two-round presidential election system that has always blocked it from power. While the AfD is unlikely to form a government in the German system that promotes coalitions, its influence may grow after federal elections in February.

And Trump has already rolled out the red carpet at Mar-a-Lago to far-right European leaders including Hungary’s strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Italy’s right-wing populist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who may be the strongest national leader in the European Union right now.

The nationalist DNA of Trump’s foreign policy is often a reaction to policies and demeanor of center-left leaders in the West.

This may help explain the president-elect’s tormenting of Trudeau — who, as a self-professed feminist who offered a warm welcome to immigrants, is the antithesis of MAGA. Trudeau is likely to be succeeded in the short-term by a Liberal Party prime minister, but the most likely outcome of a general election that must take place this year is a new government under Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. The Albertan shares some of Trump’s populist tendencies, including on immigration, and his penchant for awarding his opponents mocking nicknames. But he has also condemned Trump’s branding of Canada as the 51st state, and at the helm of a majority government, he might turn out to be a more formidable negotiator on trade issues than a severely weakened Trudeau.

Similarly, if Musk is trying to destabilize Starmer, his actions spring from a misunderstanding of Britain’s political dynamics. The Labour Party leader has just won a huge landslide and won’t have to face the electorate for again for nearly five years. And Musk even the far-right Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, the father of Brexit and a friend of Trump, is now deemed by Musk as insufficiently radical after he said he didn’t agree with the X owner’s support for jailed anti-Muslim far-right campaigner Tommy Robinson.

Starmer felt compelled to speak out after Musk used X to accuse him of being complicit in the actions of grooming gangs in a historic child abuse scandal that he handled while director of public prosecutions. In other distortions of the truth, Musk also claimed Jess Phillips, the government safeguarding minister, was “pure evil” and a “wicked creature.”

Starmer warned that “those that are spreading lies and misinformation, as far and as wide as possible – they’re not interested in victims, they’re interested in themselves.” He added: “When the poison of the far right leads to serious threats to Jess Phillips and others, then in my book, a line has been crossed.”

Despite Starmer’s tough tone, the showdown with Musk is unwelcome turbulence for a prime minister, who, like all other world leaders, has been trying to build a relationship with Trump to spare his nation from the worst consequences of a new US foreign policy built on forcing American might on friends and foes alike.

But the transatlantic fury might soon become a problem for Trump as well.

Despite his transactional instincts and desire to intimidate other leaders, Trump may need the help of American allies one day, and Musk’s antics are making it far harder for them to accommodate an incoming American president who is already deeply unpopular in many of their nations.

Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the party with the third most members in Britain’s House of Commons, reflected that antipathy toward Trump on Monday. “People have had enough of Elon Musk interfering with our country’s democracy when he clearly knows nothing about Britain,” Davey said, ironically, on X. “It’s time to summon the US ambassador to ask why an incoming US official is suggesting the UK government should be overthrown.”

Musk’s jabs might also cause problems stateside. They already look like a headache for more conventional US foreign policy officials, including Marco Rubio, the Florida senator Trump has picked to serve as secretary of state, and Florida Rep. Michael Waltz, his pick for national security adviser.

“I think it’s going to get very confusing very quickly. I don’t envy the career diplomats at the State Department, who are certainly going to have their hands full trying to figure out whose agenda they’re carrying out,” said Gorman.

Apparent conflicts between US policy and Musk’s business interests pose another complication. He has already sat in on calls between Trump and world leaders like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose forces use Musk’s Starlink internet system to support their war against Russia.

Musk’s massive commercial exposure in China might also weigh heavily on Trump’s approach and may clash with the hawkish instincts of Waltz and Rubio, who are set to be part of the most anti-Beijing Cabinet in modern American history.

In Trump’s first term, when he made foreign policy by tweet, America became a force for global disruption. Musk’s prominent role in his second administration may make those four years seem stable by comparison.