Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Trump and Musk Are Birds of a Feather

The two billionaires owe their appeal to similar gifts of bombast and self-confidence.

July 22, 2016 at 6:26 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

To infinity and beyond.
Photographer: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

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Those who like Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk probably don't care for Donald Trump. The stylistic difference between them makes for great satire. And yet the two billionaires have a lot in common, and together, they define an American ideal of 2016.

Musk is a scientist and science enthusiast, a proponent of a clean, futuristic, high-tech style that characterizes Tesla cars. Trump is everything but scientific, and his tastes run to the gold-heavy Empire style. Musk seeks inspiration in the future (he'd like to die on Mars after it has been colonized). Trump evokes a past American greatness to get his audiences fired up. They are so outwardly different, in fact, that they could be compared to the Marvel comic book characters Iron Man Tony Stark, to whom Musk is often likened, and MODAAK, or "Mental Organism Designed as America's King," who closely resembles Trump.