How much Elon Musk’s SpaceX makes — and could lose — from the American government

The owner of the site formerly known as Twitter posted another bad tweet — and this time it could cost him.

Following an apparent second assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump, Elon Musk posted on X, “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala 🤔”.

After widespread outrage and presumably some stern words from his lawyers (and who knows, maybe the Secret Service?), Musk took the post down and since said it was a joke.

“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on 𝕏,” he wrote.

In addition to being dangerous to the democratic presidential candidates, it’s possible the move could be detrimental to his companies’ bottom lines. Musk’s companies have numerous government contracts. Musk’s SpaceX ferries supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA (and brings them home when their Boeing capsule breaks down), launches military satellites for the Department of Defense, and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service helps provide US-funded connectivity for Ukrainian troops fighting against Russia.

Threatening the potential future head of that government doesn’t seem like a great idea if you want to do more business with that government in the future. X itself has been hemorrhaging advertisers who are trying to distance themselves from the toxic atmosphere on the site, but that pales in comparison to the amount Musk’s other businesses get from the government.

To be sure, it’s highly unlikely that Musk actually loses significant government dollars over the tweet — turns out there’s not a lot of competition in the private space business — though the Biden administration has been known to freeze him out on occasion. For example, Musk, whose car company is far and away the leader on EVs in the US, wasn’t involved in a federal EV summit in 2021.

This is only the latest example of Musk’s behavior on X potentially negatively affecting his other businesses.

As a side note, it’s also a very uncool move for Musk, whose companies pay millions of dollars a year to cover his own security tab (he’s founded his own security company to do the job). The New York Times just reported that his security team “operates like a mini-Secret Service, and he is guarded more like a head of state than a business executive.”

“The threats to his safety have led Mr. Musk to become more fearful and his lifestyle more isolated, three people close to him said,” according to the Times piece. “He is rarely without bodyguards — even when he went to the bathroom at X, his social media company.”