Silicon Valley billionaire, venture capitalist, and Kamala Harris backer Vinod Khosla congratulated the world’s richest man, not for his swelling wealth, but for his president-elect. It seems Elon Musk and Donald Trump are more inseparable now than on the campaign trail. Musk has gone from surrogate for the Trump campaign to an expected cabinet pick. Still, the online sparring between Musk and Khosla over another Trump administration doesn’t seem to be coming to an end anytime soon, even if it feels more cordial.“Congratulations @elonmusk on the win,” Khosla wrote on X yesterday. “Hopefully you can get Trump to do some of the things he said he’d do and not do some of the things he promised to do. Make the best of it now for the country.” He continued: “For eg if we can focus in FDA on better regulation instead of RFK kooky science it would be good. Attention to climate which you subscribe to would be good. Under MAGA banner I hope we don’t abandon our allies and Ukraine. More to come….”Khosla’s first point is in response to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is expected to be a part of Trump’s administration, too, perhaps in the world of regulating new drugs and medical devices at the Food and Drug Administration. RFK Jr. and Trump have recited the tagline “make America healthy again,” numerous times, including in his early victory speech.The thing is, Kennedy doesn’t appear to have medical or public health degrees, but he is a longtime vaccine skeptic, who appears to have faced his own health issues. Either way, recently on X, he said the “FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” later adding, “if you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.” It seems Khosla may agree there could be a need to improve the FDA’s regulations, but maybe not under the control of Kennedy, a former presidential candidate himself before he dropped out and endorsed Trump. Khosla isn’t alone in his concern. One doctor, in a letter to the editor for the Los Angeles Times, recently wrote: “Government policy will discourage new vaccines and obstruct the administration of existing ones. Liability waivers for vaccine development will be ended. Government propaganda will convince Americans to fear vaccines. With less vaccination, children will die of measles and other diseases.” Kennedy has said, “I’m not going to take away anybody’s vaccines.” Rather his three mandates from Trump are supposedly to “clean up the corruption in our government health agencies, return those agencies to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science, and Make America Healthy Again by ending the chronic disease epidemic.”Nonetheless, it is interesting to see billionaires go out of their way to congratulate Musk, rather than chief executives simply congratulating Trump, which was to be expected. Harris’s fiercest billionaire backer Mark Cuban was pretty much the first to admit defeat and congratulate the pair. “Congrats @realDonaldTrump. You won fair and square…Congrats to @elonmusk as well,” he wrote on X. Earlier, while the race was still alive, Cuban said “it’s the Harris campaign versus Elon—not even versus Trump.”A newsletter for the boldest, brightest leaders: CEO Daily is your weekday morning dossier on the news, trends, and chatter business leaders need to know. Sign up here.
