Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney admitted he’s worried about how absurdly rich some people have become and what that means for money in politics.
Talking about how on-off White House insider and tech mogul Elon Musk was recently minted the world’s first trillionaire, the former senator told journalist McKay Coppins on Tuesday’s episode of the “Deseret Voices” podcast, “I’m concerned about the amount of money a few people are getting.”
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Romney, himself said to be worth upwards of $200 million, then tried to give Musk’s 13-digit fortune some context.
“The idea that Elon Musk is going to be a trillionaire… I mean, what does that mean?” he asked. “We’re talking about 1,000 billions.”
With that much cash to splash, Romney said that Musk or anyone else that wealthy could easily flood the coffers of their political candidate of choice and, in doing so, strengthen their own influence.
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“That means he could drop a couple billion on a political campaign to support someone who would give him even more power,” the private equity firm co-founder said of Musk, who reportedly donated over $290 million to President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and super PACs backing him.
Romney went on to note that the SpaceX CEO wasn’t alone in carrying that economic heft, adding, “He’s not the only one; I shouldn’t just pick on him,” because there are plenty of others who can use their money to influence our political system.
Musk’s support for Trump earned him a semi-official post in the White House as the leading force behind the since-shuttered budget-slashing initiative, the Department of Government Efficiency.
Elon Musk, here during this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, because the world’s first trillionaire when his company SpaceX went public last month. Anadolu via Getty Images
By pushing for the massive downsizing of agencies that regulated his enterprises, such as the Department of Labor’s Office, which oversees federal contracts, he was able to throttle audits of his companies and investigations into workplace violations at businesses like Tesla, the automotive company he owns.
Last month, Musk reached trillionaire status after taking his company SpaceX public. He is now among the thousands of people who hold a whopping one-fifth of the world’s yearly economic output, according to the New York Times.
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Romney previously spoke up about the threats the ultra-wealthy could cause for society and democracy in a 2025 Times op-ed titled “Tax the Rich, Like Me.”
Talking about how tax law and other statutes are shaped to favor the well-off, he wrote, “It is not that the rich, in these cases, are cheating the government; they are playing by the rules. But given the potential peril ahead, we need to follow the Willie Sutton rule: Go where the money is.”
