Power Elite Incest

Doug Mills/The New York Times

The image I selected is of President Trump and Elon Musk. They are standing in front of the White House, which features two shiny Tesla cars parked in the driveway, one red, one blue. Matching the patriotic colors of the car, Trump is dressed in a blue suit with a red tie. His pose is candid, his facial expression odd, squinting from the sun in his eyes. Musk, dressed in all black, wearing sunglasses and a hat embroidered with Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is enthusiastically reaching for the red car door handle. The photo is from a “part news conference, part car commercial” launched to demonstrate Trump’s support of Tesla (Pager 2025). This advertisement was likely shot in response to Tesla’s stock losing value because of the public’s negative opinion of Musk. The foreground of the photo shows the shadows of film equipment, proving the staged quality of the image. 

Both individually and together, these men represent the contemporary American power elite. Trump moved directly from being a successful (wealthy) businessman swiftly into the highest political office. Musk followed a similar pipeline, using his extreme wealth from Tesla and SpaceX to garner political influence and dictate political media coverage through his purchase of Twitter. Mills describes this in the passage below:

“Like wealth and power, prestige tends to be cumulative: the more of it you have, the more you can get. These values also tend to be translatable into one another: the wealthy find it easier than the poor to gain power; those with status find it easier than those without it to control opportunities for wealth.” (Mills 1956:10)

Here, Mills explains how power is transferable in form: wealth turns into status and status turns into influence. The types of power are also transferable across economic, military, and political orders. In the context of the photograph I chose, Trump and Musk are living proof of the “interchangeability of position between the various hierarchies of money and power and celebrity.” (Mills 1956:12) Both men have bounced from economic to political to (semi) military spheres, simultaneously altering their identities from businessmen, celebrities, and authority figures.

I chose an iconic image of Trump's Tesla campaign to show the corrupt nature of the current power elite. Mills explains how the power elite act in their own interests to expand their financial and social power. There is a conflict of interest for the President to promote his friend and staff member's company; the men have an incestuous relationship, both benefiting from each other’s wealth and social/political capital, accumulating more power in their authoritarian regime. Evidently, this sort of brand promotion by a President is historically unprecedented. Trump and Musk have vested interests and command in the market, the government, and foreign affairs. The interlocking of economic, political, and military orders produces a small, tight-knit power elite with centralized authority over the nation. Although Mills argues that the power elite are not their own class in a Marxian sense, they do behave like a class due to their shared interests, social networks, and control over key institutions. 

Although Trump was previously vocal about his disdain for electric vehicles, he happily purchased his own Tesla to return a favor to Musk, who has funded millions of dollars into Trump’s agenda and plays a crucial role in dismantling the federal bureaucracy. After running the car commercial, Tesla’s stock temporarily rose by 5% before falling again (Pager 2025). 

Mills, C. Wright. 1956. The Power Elite. Oxford University Press, USA.

Mills, Doug. 2025.  “Trump, an E.V. Naysayer, Gives Tesla and Musk a White House Exhibition.” The New York Times, March 11.

Pager, Tyler. 2025. “Trump, an E.V. Naysayer, Gives Tesla and Musk a White House Exhibition.” The New York Times, March 11.