Elon Musk, considered the richest man on the planet, accepts that getting too involved in American politics backfired.

During an interview with The Economist, the South African visionary ended up recognizing that the political arena may not be the best setting where his ideas can shine as they have done in the world of business linked to technology.

"I think I got too involved in politics. Frankly, I got carried away," he mentioned.

Following his entrepreneurial instinct, Musk saw a niche of opportunity where other businessmen refused to do so, supporting Donald Trump in his attempt to become president again.

The complexity of the mission was that the New York magnate faced at least two trials with the possibility of being convicted and perhaps even sent to prison.

However, the Tesla co-founder initially opened his checkbook to allocate more than $290 million to a campaign that seemed destined to fail.

As the 2024 elections approached, with the money contributed by Elon Musk, it was possible to put together a colossal promotional campaign in the highest rated spaces in the media and not satisfied with this, the South African himself began to accompany Trump at events where he even gave out checks of up to seven figures to those who publicly committed to supporting his campaign.

As a result of this entire operation, the long-serving Republican defeated Kamala Harris on the ballot and thus won not only the presidency, but control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Trump then asked Musk to lead an effort to cut unnecessary government spending as much as possible.

This is how, together with Vivek Ramaswamy, he appointed them responsible for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but in a matter of weeks this responsibility was only carried out by the South African.

"The goal with initiatives like DOGE was to try to do something to alleviate the deficit, which is huge. We have to carefully analyze the expenses and make sure that the money is spent sensibly and that it is not wasted or used for fraudulent activities. And I received a lot of criticism for this," Musk said in the interview, aware that his place is in the private sector and not in the government.

However, derived from the four months he worked for the government without pay, the magnate closed multimillion-dollar agreements to develop projects with the government such as carrying out cargo and astronaut transport missions for NASA and satellite launches for the Department of Defense and the Pentagon.

These projects, guaranteed until the end of the current administration, ended up consolidating the former head of DOGE as the man with the greatest fortune globally.

Thanks to his acquired experience, Musk found it more convenient to continue investing in the campaigns of some key politicians in Congress than to fulfill his threat of founding a new party to compete against the current ones.