AllSides offers over 2,400 media bias ratings, including ratings for individual political writers, influencers, and political commentators. We’ve recently rated Elon Musk as Lean Right as part of our new X Influencer Bias Chart, based on internal Editorial Reviews that averaged out to a Lean Right rating — but ratings from our individual reviewers varied significantly.
For instance, one of our Lean Left reviewers thinks Musk is Right, while a Right reviewer thinks Musk is Lean Right, and our Center reviewer thinks Musk is Center. Still another Right reviewer thinks he is Right. And still other reviewers — one Center and one Lean Right — argued he is Lean Right due to his support of Donald Trump, while acknowledging that a lot of his views actually are historically Center or even Lean Left.
The whole thing is dizzying — it seems Elon Musk is a hard man to put in a box. Lean Left- and Left-rated media outlets overwhelmingly frame him as far right in media coverage, pointing to his desire to limit immigration, his woke/transgender-critical views, and his support of populist right-wing parties abroad, like Germany’s AfD and Argentina’s President Milei; left-wingers protesting against him have held up signs equating his views with fascism. Meanwhile, others argue his penchant for environmentalism (creating electric vehicles), shirking of traditional family values (he has 14 children with four different women), advocacy for free speech (a position which was unmistakably left-wing for most of the 20th century, but which we’ve heard a lot about from conservatives in recent years, though liberals seem concerned again in 2025), and desire to implant us all with brain chips (a move that upsets Christian conservatives) make him Center, or even Lean Left by historical standards. His desire to reduce the scope and size of the federal government can be seen as conservative or even libertarian, which as an ideology appears to be moving toward the center.
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AllSides has been fielding a lot of questions from readers about whether the true center of American politics, or simply pundits’ perception of the “vibes,” has shifted right. If nearly 50% of Americans voted for Donald Trump, are his views really far right, as many claim? Or are his views closer to a new Center?
Defining the left-right political spectrum is not easy in an age when one’s views can be all over the map, and when ideological positions switch parties as time goes on.
The AllSides team weighs in below on the question: What’s Elon Musk’s bias?
View from the Center
Clare Ashcraft, Bridging Coordinator and Media Analyst, Center Bias
If I told you the president’s wife was an immigrant, his top advisor was an African immigrant who made electric vehicles, his chief of staff was the first woman to do the job, and during his first term he nominated the first openly-gay person to a cabinet-level position, what party do you think that president belonged to?
Anyone who’s been around Trump-era politics will probably admit that Trump is not your typical conservative (in fact he’s changed party affiliation five times). But he’s now been the face of the Republican Party for nearly a decade and nearly all conservatives have fallen in line with MAGA. So if MAGA wasn’t traditionally conservative, but conservatives turned MAGA, is the definition of conservative changing?
Terminology is confusing. Conservative and liberal are ideologies with storied historical meanings, while Republican and Democrat are constantly shifting party platforms, and what’s considered left and right is somewhere in between—it shifts, but generally socialists and progressives are always going to be considered the left while traditionalists are on the right. Populism can be left or right, and populism is a big part of MAGA. Now, everything has flipped on its head and the context around these terms have largely collapsed. Conservative, populist, right-wing, Republican, MAGA, far-right, all mean the same thing to a layman and they certainly overlap, but not always.
Take Musk, not only does he make electric cars, but he wants to occupy Mars and put Neuralinks in everyone’s heads. Those aren’t by any stretch traditional conservative values. They’re capitalist and pro-technology. That’s to say nothing of his 14 kids with four different women, which does not reflect the family values of traditional conservatives either.
Musk’s actions reflect a center, pro-capitalist, pro-environmentalist viewpoint, but his recent rhetoric has been a different story. It’s pro-MAGA, and reflects many views on the right such as opposition to transgender healthcare and concerns about voter fraud and left-wing media bias. Of course, he also sunk an unfathomable amount of money into helping Donald Trump win the election.
I think Lean Right is the rating for Elon Musk, but it’s complicated. He’s not conservative, arguably not even very right-wing, but he is attached at the hip to the face of the Republican party which is increasingly reshaping what right-wing is. I think everyone would agree he’s MAGA, and everyone on the right seems to be MAGA now, but everyone in MAGA wasn’t always on the right (see Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)? So is MAGA right-wing? I’m not sure, the left seems to think so, but we’re still in the middle of it, so we’ll see how things shake out.
View from the Left
Evan Wagner, Product Manager, Lean Left bias
As an information source, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Elon Musk, in 2025, is very strongly Right biased.
As a person, I would guess he’s not terribly committed to any ideology, conservative or otherwise. Even at the height of liberals’ appreciation for Musk, it was plain enough to see he wasn’t an environmentalist, but an entrepreneur. If he was born in 1871, he’d have pioneered the gas car; instead, having been born in 1971, he built his fortune on an overlooked market opportunity that just so happened to be helpful in addressing climate change. In the Obama era, that was enough to be feted like a king by the center-left. Hopefully my compatriots are now coming to their senses about outsourcing major policy goals to businessmen.
If Musk has an ideology, it probably doesn’t fit neatly on the American left-right axis. But for one reason or another, he’s recently found it in his personal interest to operate the world’s biggest megaphone for a cynical, reductive, reactionary, right-wing worldview. (If anything, Wall Street Journal (Center bias) suggested Musk’s rightward shift was sparked by a 2021 spat with the previous administration over Tesla’s anti-union posture — that’s not very left wing!)
It’s not entirely crazy to surmise that his personal beliefs may average out to Center, though I think a more accurate summary of his beliefs would be, “I, Elon Musk, shouldn’t be constrained by the government in any way, and will act accordingly.” But divining how he really feels about everything is mostly beside the point for what AllSides is supposed to do.
One of our 16 types of bias is called “mind reading,” in which a journalist proclaims someone’s intentions without said someone having declared said intentions. Are we at AllSides not hypocrites if we don’t consider someone’s words and actions more informative about their bias than guesses about their “true” intentions?
Musk has repeatedly lauded one of Germany’s furthest-right parties (yes, Alternative for Germany sometimes casts itself as a broad ideological coalition for political gain, as nearly all parties do — but most of the goals in its manifesto would move German policy strongly to the right). He hosts rallies draped in jingoistic decor. On the eve of the 2024 election, Washington Post (Lean Left bias) published a convincing analysis finding that X was likely actively boosting conservative perspectives.
Meanwhile, if Musk was planning to try to influence Trump to the left on climate or some other major policy area — and he seems to be one of the best-positioned people in the world to do that — I’m not seeing a whit of evidence. Trump has even killed Biden’s EV charging program, from which Tesla had benefited handsomely.
To me the case is open and shut: believe Musk when he tells you, over and over, with his actions (and often his words), that he is on Team Right.
View from the Right
Julie Mastrine, Director of Marketing and Media Bias Ratings, Lean Right bias
Inherent in the issue of rating bias is the subjectivity of the categories. What is “far right” to a progressive is merely “Center” to a traditional conservative. In my opinion, we’d live in a better world if people generally agreed that Musk's views represent the Center, but critics and left-wing media repeatedly frame him in cahoots with the “far” right — so therefore, Lean Right is the best rating for him, to account for all of these views. That is because AllSides ratings aim to represent the average perspective of Americans across the political spectrum.
Still, I can personally see an argument for the man representing the Center. In a sane world, a man with such myriad views as wanting to promote free speech, cut government waste, ensure AI has a positive impact on humans, move us toward electric vehicles, incentivize family formation via tax breaks, secure the border, prohibit gender modification medical interventions, privatize inefficient, publicly funded companies, reduce federal involvement in education, prioritize the needs of native Americans over globalists and foreigners, put brainchips in us and colonize space isn't someone who is neatly left or right. He gathers from a mix of left, center, and right views, and his goal seems to be to achieve optimized human flourishing (at least from his perspective).
Musk certainly has a number of views right-wing Americans agree with. From the vantage point of an extremely secularized, liberal mainstream American culture, the conservative camp can look extreme, but Musk doesn't even 100% fit that profile. He clearly thinks it's fine and good to have a harem of baby mamas and condone surrogacy, and his brainchip implantation goal is honestly just demonic, from a conservative Christian perspective.
The trouble with the term "far-right" is that it is used to marginalize certain views, to make them appear too extreme or out of bounds, and to scare people away from considering them. And sure, society needs to have views that are outside the bounds of consideration. But what ends up in that particular parking lot these days — including many, not all, of Musk’s ideas — are often those that are good and useful for society.
Income tax breaks to incentivize family formation are good, because without new families, you longer have a country, your lineage, or a human species at all. Two-parent households with a mother and a father are good, and produce the best life outcomes for offspring — but people who advocate for this are often called far-right extremists. Musk isn't extreme, nor far right, but society has moved too far left to see that.
