Elon Musk sometimes seems Trumpy. But is he for Trump?
The Tesla and SpaceX boss is clear about his thoughts on President Biden but is holding his cards closer on Donald Trump.
Elon Musk appears to be strongly Never Biden. But does that make him for former President Donald Trump?
For more than two years, Musk has made clear his displeasure with President Biden. But the billionaire behind the electric-car company Tesla, the rocket maker SpaceX and the social-media platform X has danced around whether he would support Trump in his bid for a second White House term.
Musk, who as recently as late 2021 was eschewing involvement in politics, has slowly gone toward the MAGA tribe on X, echoing increasingly alarmist and conspiratorial public stances on immigration and voting policy that now put him firmly in the Donald Trump wing of social media.
Yet, while they have both embraced billionaire populism, they haven’t exactly embraced each other, as both men have accused the other of being full of it.
Then came their secret meeting this past week in Florida.
News of the tête-à-tête conveniently broke as Trump was racking up wins on Super Tuesday, the final blow to Nikki Haley and her longshot bid to become the Republican presidential nominee. After she dropped out, Trump, as the presumptive candidate against Biden, became Musk’s best shot at defeating the Democrat this fall.
Musk, who has never been seen as a big political donor and has painted himself as independent, has yet to address the meeting with Trump directly, except to say he isn’t giving money to either candidate.
Still, Musk could help. Money aside, there is Musk’s influence directed through X, as well as how he pulls the site’s levers and what he personally amplifies to his more than 175 million followers.
November will be the first U.S. presidential election since Musk acquired the platform. Unease with progressive liberal politics, or what he has dubbed the Woke Mind Virus, helped drive Musk to acquire Twitter-turned-X in late 2022 and thrust himself into larger political debates.
Additionally, the success of SpaceX’s satellite communication network, Starlink, has inserted him into geopolitics. And at times he has been at odds with U.S. government positions on foreign affairs.
Through it all, Musk has complained about being unfairly targeted by the Biden administration, which has numerous government agencies, including the Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission and National Labor Relations Board, conducting investigations of his empire.
Much of Musk’s most-heated animosity with Biden appears to stem from being snubbed from an electric-car event held at the White House in 2021, which the billionaire continues to grumble about years later.
“Let’s not forget the White House giving Tesla the cold shoulder, excluding us from the EV summit and crediting GM with “leading the electric car revolution” in the same quarter that they delivered 26 electric cars (not a typo) and Tesla delivered 300 thousand,” Musk tweeted in December, one of more than 30 times he has mentioned the Biden name in posts since 2022.
Most of those mentions weren’t very flattering, such as when Musk tweeted, “Biden is a damp [sock emoji] puppet in human form.” Or when he commented, “The corpse in Weekend at Bernie’s literally looks more alive than Biden.”
Biden is a damp 🧦 puppet in human form
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 27, 2022
Even Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, has vented about Biden and the government investigations. “Have you any idea how furious I am?” she tweeted. “People in other countries are proud of Elon and do not understand the US President’s motive. Please tell me how I should answer them.”
For Musk, the answer seemed simple.
After voting for Hillary Clinton against Trump in 2016 and then Biden against Trump in 2020, Musk said he would be going a different route in the 2022 midterm elections. “Given unprovoked attacks by leading Democrats against me & a very cold shoulder to Tesla & SpaceX, I intend to vote Republican in November,” tweeted Musk in May of that year.
Even with Musk’s embrace of the Republican Party, he still wasn’t on Team Trump. That summer, the two men were exchanging jabs.
Trump called Musk a “bulls — artist” during a public rally, while Musk responded by tweeting: “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”
Despite the flare-up, Musk has mostly been gracious toward Trump on X. He has mentioned the former president’s name roughly the same number of times as Biden in the past two years but in supportive ways, and giving maybe one of the ultimate compliments in Musk’s eyes by praising him as “never boring!”
“Even though I think a less divisive candidate would be better in 2024, I still think Trump should be restored to Twitter,” Musk tweeted in 2022 before completing his purchase of the social-media platform.
Even though I think a less divisive candidate would be better in 2024, I still think Trump should be restored to Twitter
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2022
Once he took control of X, Musk soon reinstated Trump’s account, which had been taken down under previous leadership following the Capitol riot in January 2021.
As the presidential race got going, Musk last year attempted to play the role of ringmaster, inviting candidates from both parties to talk with him on X during live audio sessions that often generated lots of listeners and news headlines.
At the time, ahead of the nominating contests, there were other choices besides Biden and Trump. The Republican field had included Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Musk had shared time with those candidates on his X audio forum and praised them. And, at one point, Musk suggested he would support DeSantis in 2024.
Musk also participated in X audio forums with the Biden challengers Rep. Dean Phillips and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But they have proved no match against the sitting president, and Kennedy later switched to run as an independent candidate. Kennedy’s supporters have held out hope that Musk would join with other tech leaders in supporting his cause.
Meanwhile, Musk’s position publicly on Trump remained unclear. In November, Musk waffled on whether he would support Trump but was clear where he stood on Biden.
“I would not vote for Biden,” Musk said at a conference. “I’m not saying I would vote for Trump, but I mean this is definitely a difficult choice.”
In recent days, as Trump presumably locked up the nominating contest, Musk has been chiding some as reflexively being against the man. “Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a very real disease,” Musk tweeted this month.
And now, Trump is emerging as the guy for those who want the best chance against Biden.
After meeting with Trump, Musk tweeted: “Politics is tribal, rather than logical.”
The Wall Street Journal
