SpaceX CEO Elon Musk brings a child, usually his son X, everywhere. Apart from being a nice sight, the move brings a helpful sense of levity to the GOP reboot President-elect Donald Trump has set in action.
That levity is needed with a presidential transition proving quite controversial, particularly in the realm of Cabinet picks. One addition Trump has proposed, the Department of Government Efficiency, is to be run by Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
For this department, along with such things as Senate confirmation hearings, preliminary meetings will probably be tense. Ideas are proposed, some go to the wayside, and others follow some assignment of blame. Reports of the DOGE talks already sound contentious yet optimistic, with one describing an initial meeting on Tuesday as an “intervention” for the congressmen in attendance.
But just before the meeting, Musk entered with his 4-year-old son. The businessman is by no means a model of family life (having fathered 12 children with three women, so far), but his insistence on bringing his children everywhere continues to make its mark on his persona.
Whether a nuisance or a joy for those present at the DOGE meeting, Musk’s decision to have X tag along orients the public’s perception of his goals. He is not joking about the birthrate and civilizational decline concerns that make up much of his tweeting, and he wants that angle to be clear.
The optics firstly transform Musk himself, who has glided from being a sort of odd and spacey, but smart, tech-obsessed billionaire with big ideas to a tech-obsessed Republican bureaucrat and a valuable voice of social commentary. One cannot go far on X, the social media platform that Musk owns, without reaching some level of familiarity with the businessman’s takes.
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Model family man or not, he is the type of figure the GOP needs to urge on its own transformation into the pro-family party of our time. Musk addresses the cultural transformation necessary to bring conservative family policies to reality. The people who need convincing (not the 20-year-olds all-in on marrying young) also need reminding that having children is not for couples of one identical socioeconomic status. Billionaires such as Musk promote the value, and so too can skeptical or working-class couples pursue a family. Seeing little X out with Musk on so many of his ventures does the trick of keeping children in their minds, of “normalizing” parenthood again.
The issue matters to Musk. Who knows what his deeper intentions are or how unconventional, or inadvisable, they are — but he is helping to rebuild the “lost trust” that Vice President-elect J.D. Vance says so animates the new administration’s posture on abortion.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
