Former National Security Council (NSC) adviser Fiona Hill said in a new interview that former President Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk are “all about their own profits and power.”
As two wealthy businessmen, Trump and Musk have teamed up on the campaign trail.
Musk has explicitly endorsed Trump and appeared at rallies alongside the former president. He is a major financial backer of Trump’s campaign, donating $118 million.
It’s unclear if Trump would offer Musk a position in his cabinet if he wins the election, though the relationship raises concerns for some.
Hill, who served under the Trump administration, participated in an interview with Politico Magazine. In it, she was asked what the danger is of having business people in power like Trump and Musk, who owns Tesla, SpaceX and the social media platform X.
“It’s that ultimately, they’re all about their own profits and power. We’ve seen members of the Trump family get more and more lucrative business deals that they certainly wouldn’t have done unless they’d had proximity to power,” Hill said.
These are all hallmarks of countries around the world where we see people’s proximity to other big businesses and billionaires as really the only way to enter into the economic system,” she continued.
Hill argued that she personally would not like to see America transcend into an economic path like that, where “the only people who can get ahead and make profits for their businesses are those who are in positions of proximity to the people who are in charge.”
“The rest of us are incidental to that class of people,” she said.
In the interview, Hill also highlighted how the relationship between Musk, Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin may be of concern to Americans. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that there were “secret” conversations between Musk and Putin since at least late 2022.
Trump has consistently praised Putin and argued the United States should be in conversation with Russia.
What Trump, Putin and Musk have in common, Hill argues, is that they are oligarchs who are driven by power and one another. “They aren’t driven by the people they represent or the companies that they represent, but by the peer group that they are in, which is an extraordinarily small group of people,” she said. “Their interactions are all about them figuring out how to exercise power together.”
The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign and X for comment.
