Doubt that Elon Musk ‘earned’ his trillion? Rightwing media says you’re in an ‘impotent envy cult’

Doubt that Elon Musk ‘earned’ his trillion? Rightwing media says you’re in an ‘impotent envy cult’

Did all those zeros make Musk happy? Did the army of children he has sired love him more? Did he find inner peace? We’ll never know because Musk was dragged back to being a boring old billionaire last Wednesday, after shares in Tesla and SpaceX plunged amid a broader tech sell-off.

Of course, it’s possible that by the time you’re reading this the stock market has shifted again and Musk is back to being a trillionaire. That’s the beauty of the modern economy: the super-rich can make or lose more money in a day than most of us would ever see in thousands of lifetimes. Between January and June, Musk increased his net worth by a cool $322bn, or more than the GDP of Portugal.

There is a lot of interest in the fluctuations on Musk’s financial scoreboard. But according to various politicians and conservative media outlets, us commoners should not be asking ridiculous questions such as: does Musk’s trillionaire status reflect the United States’ dangerous shift into oligarchy and staggering inequality?

No, the important thing to remember about the talented Mr Musk is, to quote a Fox News op-ed: “he earned every penny.” Over at the Wall Street Journal, they’re saying Musk is so wealthy because “his companies have created tremendous value”.

Republican senator Cynthia Lummis, meanwhile, told TMZ (of all outlets) that “Musk’s money was raised because the harder he worked, the smarter he was, the luckier he got.” According to Lummis, “it’s absolutely logical that Elon Musk is the first trillionaire” and he deserves everything he has because of his global contributions to society – though the 700,000 people around the world estimated to have died because Musk took a chainsaw to USAID may have begged to differ.

The lovefest continues. The National Review dismisses anyone who questions Musk’s wealth as being part of “an impotent envy cult”. Per the National Review: “There are such things in history as great men, and Musk is one of them.” The Los Angeles Times (owned by another billionaire born in South Africa) is similarly enthusiastic; columnist Jonah Goldberg explained that Musk’s trillionaire status “is a good thing, actually” because the economy is not a “static pie”: innovation grows the pie, meaning more pie for everyone.

Are you wondering where your slice is? Or how the world’s richest people have claimed, according to Oxfam, more of this pie than half of humanity?

These Musk-loving pundits and politicians insist this rocketman deserves his trillion dollars but stop short of spelling out how exactly one can “earn” so much money. “[Musk’s accomplishments are] a testament to human ingenuity, immigrant success and American greatness, on a scale that is hard to describe,” Goldberg says. So hard to describe, it seems, that he, along with Musk’s other fans, avoid going too deep into the inconvenient details. Don’t worry though. I’m here to help. Here’s an idiot’s guide to making a trillion dollars.

Step one: ensure you’re born on third base

Whatever you think of Musk, the man is obviously clever and talented. But there are plenty of clever and talented people born into circumstances that ensure they’ll never realise their potential. As the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould once said about the obsession with Albert Einstein’s genius: “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” Would Musk have reached a trillion dollars if he had been born poor and Black instead of rich and white in apartheid South Africa? It would certainly have been a lot harder.

Step two: don’t let the law slow you down

According to Fox News, Musk’s trillionaire status could only have happened in the US, with its culture of “innovation, risk-taking and the freedom to pursue ideas”. The risk-taking Fox doesn’t talk about? Working illegally. In 2024, the Washington Post reported that after Musk dropped out of Stanford University in 1995 to become an entrepreneur, “he did not have the legal right to work while building the company that became Zip2, which sold for about $300m in 1999.”

Musk’s brother, Kimbal, has even joked about their “illegal immigrant” status, while Elon called it a “grey area” before more recently posting on X that he worked in the US legally.

Step three: buy yourself an election

Musk’s savviest business move wasn’t buying into Tesla or founding SpaceX. It was investing $290m into the 2024 election. In return, he became Donald Trump’s right-hand man, and his net worth ballooned from around $270bn in October 2024 to more than a trillion dollars in June 2026. The Trump administration has helpfully cut taxes for the rich, while easing regulatory hurdles for and awarding billion-dollar government contracts to Musk’s companies.

Step four: stack the stock indices

Over at Fortune, Douglas P McCormick, managing partner at Oridian Capital Partners, explains: “Musk is a trillionaire for one reason: investors, acting with free will and full information, agreed to buy in [to SpaceX] at that price. No one was forced, no one was defrauded, and the price paid is their business and their risk to bear.”

But that’s not entirely right. SpaceX reportedly lobbied leaders of the world’s largest stock indices to ensure the company would be included as a component stock shortly after going public – much earlier than is typical. Per the New York Times: “It was a big ask. Most indexes, like the Nasdaq-100, do not add companies until at least a year after they go public to protect index funds … from trading volatility. If SpaceX was included faster than normal, it would compel large index funds run by giants like Fidelity and Vanguard to buy millions of SpaceX shares practically overnight. While that could boost SpaceX’s share price, it could expose index fund investors to more risk.” (Nasdaq denied it changed its rule for SpaceX.)

What does this mean? It means your retirement fund is now likely linked to SpaceX’s success – and Musk’s net worth.

Step five: stave off the pitchforks