Elon Musk has just about professed his timeless like to former president Donald Trump, appearing as a mouthpiece for the presidential candidate on social media and even reportedly spending huge cash on his marketing campaign. Regardless of all this, Trump nonetheless doesn’t actually like Elon Musk. Actually, he type of hates him and thinks he’s bizarre. Ouch.
Musk promptly endorsed Trump after a failed assassination try at a Pennsylvania rally in July, and since then he has raised thousands and thousands for his marketing campaign via the America PAC, in accordance with Rolling Stone. In simply the previous two weeks it has poured $16 million into outreach for the marketing campaign – a giant assist for a candidate with a extremely weak floor sport.
Right here’s just a little extra from Rolling Stone on how Musk and Trump’s relationship is fraught with awkwardness and a mutual understanding that they each want one another (as a result of there are more and more fewer different individuals who will cope with their shit):
In response to an individual near the twice-impeached convicted felon, Trump “thinks he’s bizarre. Sorry to make use of a phrase used lots by Democrats now.” This supply has spoken to the previous president about Musk as just lately as July. One other supply, who has been within the room a number of instances over time when Trump has spoken privately about Musk, relays to Rolling Stone that Trump has at instances, as just lately as prior to now few months, stated that Musk is “boring,” annoying, and susceptible to temper swings.
That will sound wealthy, coming from Donald J. Trump, who’s arguably all three of these issues to a galling diploma. Nonetheless, it underscores Trump’s personal skill to acknowledge the inherent weirdness or unpopular traits of a few of his most distinguished political backers. For example, Trump has lengthy understood, in a manner that many conservative leaders haven’t, that it’s crucial for the GOP’s electoral successes that Republicans relentlessly about what their plans are on abortion, as a result of most People discover their views repulsive.
Previously, Trump and Musk have publicly feuded, with the previous gratuitously insulting the latter, partly as a result of Musk stated it was time to maneuver on from Trump in 2022 and supported Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 2024 Republican major bid.
“When Elon Musk got here to the White Home asking me for assistance on all his many backed initiatives,” Trump wrote in 2022, “whether or not it’s electrical vehicles that don’t drive lengthy sufficient, driverless vehicles that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, with out which subsidies he’d be nugatory, and telling me how he was a giant Trump fan and Republican, I may have stated, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have accomplished it.”
I’ll be so trustworthy with you of us – I take into consideration that tweet from Trump nearly on daily basis of my life. Anyway, lest we neglect that across the identical time as that assembly, Trump additionally referred to as Musk a “bullshit artist.” Damaged clock, and all that.
To be truthful, sources inform RS that Trump does say some nicer issues privately about Musk. Nevertheless, Trump’s true (and ruder) emotions nonetheless bubble to the highest. Not too long ago, Trump described Musk as “a really totally different form of man,” which is outwardly not a praise.
When requested concerning the reporting on the harsher non-public phrases Trump has had for Musk just lately, Trump marketing campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung merely tells Rolling Stone the previous president and Musk “agree on the massive points dealing with our nation, and that Kamala Harris have to be stopped earlier than she utterly destroys America,” including: “That’s why so many individuals from all political backgrounds have united behind President Trump to Make America Nice Once more.”
That is all very clearly transactional. Trump and his marketing campaign desperately want cash and support. Musk brings each these issues in spades between the obscene wealth he has amassed and his hoards of deeply passionate followers.
In fact, this isn’t all only a one-way avenue. Musk would profit drastically from a second Trump presidency quite than Harris, as Rolling Stone explains:
A Trump victory may very well be a giant monetary win for Musk. Harris has proposed a wealth tax on households value greater than $100 million, in addition to a rise within the company tax charge, which Trump slashed as president. Musk, value a reported $247 billion, posted on X that Harris’ financial agenda “results in bread traces and ugly sneakers.”
Trump, in the meantime, is pitching to rich donors that they should fund him so he can shield their tax cuts, and reduce the company tax charge even additional.
It’ll be fascinating to see the place this relationship goes previous November. I’m assuming it’ll simply get even stranger earlier than then, however as soon as the election passes and the outcomes are recognized, it’s extremely unlikely Trump will see any actual want for the CEO.
