WASHINGTON (AP) — For two weeks, Donald Trump has welcomed Elon Musk into his world. On Tuesday it was Musk’s turn to host the newly elected president.

Trump flew to South Texas to watch Musk’s SpaceX launch a Starship rocket near the Mexican border. Trump listened intently as the world’s richest man explained how the test would work and demonstrated with a model. And then Trump peered into the clear sky to watch the launch.

It didn’t go perfectly: the reusable booster did not return to the launch pad as it did in an earlier test last month. Instead, the booster was sent for a landing in the Gulf of Mexico.

But Trump’s presence at the launch was a remarkable show of intimacy between the two men, with implications for American politics, government, foreign policy and even the possibility of humans reaching Mars.

Musk has spent about $200 million to help Trump defeat Democrat Kamala Harris in the presidential race, and he has been given unprecedented access. He advised Trump on nominees for the new administration, participated in the president-elect’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and was asked to co-chair an advisory panel on reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy.

In addition to political influence Musk could benefit personally also. SpaceXhis rocket company, has billions of dollars in government contracts and aims to eventually establish a colony on Mars. He is also CEO of Tesla, which makes electric vehicles, and has battled regulators over safety concerns related to autonomous driving.

“Trump has the utmost appreciation for people who break the rules and get away with it,” said William Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. “Musk has performed exceptionally well in this regard.”

To top it all off, Musk owns the social media company X, formally known as Twitter, which he has used as a position of influence to promote Trump and his agenda.

“Stop the swamp!” he wrote Tuesday as he shared a warning that entrenched Washington interests are trying to undermine Trump before his inauguration.

Before the election, Musk dismissed the idea that he expected any favors in return for his support of Trump in the presidential race.

“There is no quid pro quo” he posted on X in September. “With a Trump administration, we can implement major government reforms, remove the bureaucratic paperwork that is choking the country and unleash a new era of prosperity.”

However, Trump has barely gone anywhere without Musk in the two weeks since he defeated Harris. Musk accompanied Trump to a meeting with House Republicans in Washington and sat next to him at an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in New York. The trip to Texas for the rocket launch marked only the third time Trump has been outside Florida since the election.

As Trump’s protective motorcade left the launch site to return to the airport on Tuesday evening, one of Musk’s angular, shiny Tesla Cybertrucks stood in the middle of the formation of black SUVs.

Much of Trump’s activities take place with little public access to the press. Unlike his predecessors, he has chosen not to regularly open up his travel plans or events to journalists.

The relationship between Trump and Musk was not always so close.

Two years ago, Trump mocked Musk in stump speeches and Musk said it was time for Trump to “hang his hat and sail off into the sunset.”

“Trump would be 82 at the end of his term, which is too old to be CEO of anything, let alone the United States of America,” Musk wrote. on social media.

But Musk quickly backed Trump after the former president survived an assassination attempt in July. He quickly became a central figure in Trump’s inner circle, sometimes looking more like his running mate than Ohio Senator JD Vance.

Trump began bragging about Musk’s achievements at campaign rallies, such as when Starship’s reusable rocket booster returned to the launch tower on a previous occasion and was captured by mechanical arms.

“Those arms grab him like you grab your baby, just like you grab your little baby. And it hugged it and just put it down, and there it was,” Trump said.

Musk joined Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort on election night and has spent much of the two weeks there since. Trump’s granddaughter Kai Trump posted a photo of her with Musk at one of Trump’s golf resorts and wrote that Musk was “reaching uncle status.”

Last week, Musk appeared in a golden ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, sitting in the center of the room as the guest of honor at an event. Trump said in his remarks at the black tie event that Musk’s IQ is “about as high as they can get” and praised him as “a really good guy.”

“Three weeks ago he launched a rocket and then he went to Pennsylvania to campaign because he thought this was more important than launching rockets that cost billions of dollars,” Trump said.

He joked about Musk’s constant presence at Mar-a-Lago, saying, “He loves this place. I can’t get him out of here.”

He added, “And you know what, I like having him here.”

Musk said of the election results: “The public has given us a mandate that couldn’t be clearer.”

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Price reported from New York.