Elon Musk’s personal foreign policy of promoting far-right parties is sparking outrage among leaders in Europe and handing them a dilemma: How do they rebuke the tech titan without angering his new patron — Donald Trump?

Musk could easily be dismissed as a mischievous antagonist who simply loves to shock and is pursuing his own obsessions one X post at a time.

But he’s not just some troll. He’s the world’s richest man, owns some of the globe’s most strategic and influential businesses, and is wielding a mighty social media network. Musk is highlighting his enormous influence as a populist force galvanizing political provocateurs as a kind of one-man supranational non-state power.

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.

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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.”

European leaders line up to condemn Musk

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.

— 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.

Trumpism is incompatible with some of America’s allies

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.

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Elon Musk is infuriating European leaders with his political grenades

• The leaders of the UK, Germany, and France have condemned Elon Musk's comments about Europe.

• His frequent X posts have become increasingly extreme in recent days.

• It's not clear how these interventions benefit Musk, but they don't appear to be hurting him either.

Donald Trump is less than two weeks away from being sworn in as president for the second time. But, after spending hundreds of millions helping him return to the White House in an election he said would decide "the fate of Western civilization," Elon Musk is increasingly focused on European politics.

Musk has said he became outspoken on politics to "defeat the woke mind virus." Since Trump's election, he has turned his brash focus toward Europe in his frequent posts on X.

He's called for the release of a far-right agitator from prison in the UK, called the country's leader "utterly despicable," and wondered whether America should "liberate" Britain — all in the past week.

Musk has inserted himself into and fueled a political row over the UK government's handling of an inquiry into gangs who sexually exploited children. When he acquired Twitter, now called X, in 2022, he said combating images of child sexual abuse on the platform was "Priority #1."

Musk has also endorsed Germany's far-right AfD party ahead of elections there in late February. His comments have earned him rebukes from leaders across the continent.

Musk's interventions have been condemned by the leaders of Germany, France, and the UK

"Don't feed the troll," German chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Sunday after Musk posted that "only the AfD can save Germany." On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said, "Ten years ago, who could have imagined it if we had been told that the owner of one of the largest social networks in the world would support a new international reactionary movement and intervene directly in elections."

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who leads the left-leaning Labour Party, hit back at Musk, without naming him, in a speech the same day, saying: "Those who are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible are not interested in victims — they're interested in themselves."

Musk plans to host a conversation on X with the AfD's leader this week. He earlier defended his intervention in Germany in an op-ed in Welt am Sonntag, saying he has "significant investments" there — Tesla has a factory near Berlin. (Welt am Sonntag, along with Business Insider and Politico, are owned by Axel Springer.)

But, unlike in America, his political interventions in Europe don't obviously affect those investments. Tesla stock closed at $251 on Election Day in November. It then surged as investors recognized that Musk's gamble backing Trump had paid off.

As Musk has posted about Europe in recent days, Tesla's stock has remained relatively stable, closing at $411 on Monday, suggesting that investors are paying little, if any, attention.

Musk has become particularly engrossed in UK politics

The world's richest person has been posting and reposting dozens of times a day on X. He's also boosting the reach of those he endorses to his 211 million followers.

Musk posted last week about the UK's grooming scandal, calling for Starmer to resign and be jailed for "his complicity in the worst mass crime in the history of Britain."

This was followed on Saturday by a front-page Daily Mail story headlined, "Starmer 'guilty as anyone' over grooming gangs." The comment was from a former detective and whistleblower who helped expose pedophile gangs, but Musk's posts have fueled the story and helped keep it on the front pages of arguably the UK's most influential newspaper.

On Tuesday, Politico even attributed a government response in the House of Commons regarding the scandal to Musk, saying he had "elicited some action."

Musk turned on Nigel Farage, the British politician and Trump ally

Other British newspapers, such as the Daily Telegraph, have also carried significant coverage of Musk's comments — and reported that Musk was mulling a huge donation to Nigel Farage's Reform UK party.

Farage has called Musk a "hero," but Musk said on Sunday that Farage, a member of Parliament and a friend of Trump's, should quit as leader. He appears to have turned on him after Farage didn't follow his call for far-right agitator Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, to be freed from prison.

Yaxley-Lennon is serving a sentence for contempt of court after repeating untrue claims about a Syrian refugee, for which he was previously successfully sued for defamation.

Musk's pivot was reported across Britain's front pages on Monday, and Starmer's attack on him was headline news on Tuesday.

Some British commentators have run with Musk's comments to put pressure on the Labour government. On Monday, Piers Morgan wrote on X that Starmer "must order a full no-holds-barred national inquiry into exactly what happened in the appalling gang rape scandal," including "who was accountable for such lengthy systemic failure of justice." Morgan said Starmer should also investigate "his own role," as Starmer was the country's chief prosecutor when the scandals first emerged before he entered politics.

Musk's interventions in the US benefited him materially. The analyst Dan Ives called Trump's reelection a "home run" for Tesla, with the stock rising the day after the election. Having the new president's ear will likely help Musk secure policies favorable to his companies. There is no obvious corollary in Europe, leaving many wondering how this is benefiting him.

But the past few days also suggest Musk has little to lose by continuing to post whatever he likes on X.

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