Member-only story
How Cash and Connections Created a Kingmaker
The Musk-Trump “bromance” echoes an earlier era
These days, Elon Musk and Donald Trump are good buddies. That’s nice to see; they both seem like they could have used a friend over the years.
The world’s richest man and the once and future president are enjoying a very public relationship that media organizations are apparently required to call a “bromance.” They’ve aligned ideologically and, it seems, financially. Musk tweaked X to amplify pro-Trump voices and donated over $100 million to Trump’s campaign, helping him get over the finish line in the swing states. Trump will reward Musk by giving him input over government spending (which may have the side effect of helping his companies make more profit).
The relationship seems unprecedented: a wealthy tycoon working in lockstep with the president, both scratching each other’s backs. But it’s not as new as it seems. At the end of the Gilded Age, businessman Mark Hanna helped make William McKinley president and, in the process, helped to shape political campaigning and the modern Republican Party — for better or worse.
Marcus Alonzo Hanna wasn’t the richest man in the world, but he did go to high school with the world’s wealthiest person. Hanna grew up near booming Cleveland, Ohio, the son of a doctor who also…
