Billionaire Elon Musk has been using his social media platform X to go to bat for President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks and promote his own preferred candidates, advocating for choices he views as change agents who will help remake the US government.

In several high-profile cases, however, Musk backed people who either lost out on the roles or withdrew from consideration, suggesting some early limits to the Republican mega donor's influence even as he has emerged as one of Trump's most powerful allies.

Musk, who has 206 million followers on X, posted or reposted about Trump's cabinet picks more than 70 times between Nov 7 and Nov 20, a Reuters review found.

Though the posts represented just a fraction of his more than 2,000 posts during that period, Musk in many cases used them to give attention to Trump's most controversial choices, including former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard for US intelligence chief and environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr to lead the top US health agency.

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