In the summer of 2023, one guy famous for being rich, disgraced former President Donald Trump, called another guy famous for being rich, billionaire genius businessman and noted philanthropist Elon Musk. According to the Washington Post’s sources, that call was to gauge the Twitter Chairman’s interest in purchasing Trump-centric social media site Truth Social. A deal wasn’t struck between the two parties, likely because the site has just 600,000 active users and Trump’s 90 percent ownership of the Mastodon-based social site had generated just $200 in income.
Truth Social kicked off in 2022, following Trump’s 2021 ban from Twitter and Meta platforms for his role in the January 6th U.S. Capitol attacks. It has been the twice-impeached presidential candidate’s preferred method of communicating with his bubble of supporters since, and he allegedly tracks interactions on the site nearly as often as he did with Twitter while in the Oval Office.
Musk and Trump once had a bit of a beef forming, as the self-tanner one said the hair plugs one was “another bullshit artist.” Musk then fired back by saying Trump should “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.” They seem to have buried the hatchet, however, as both parties have been a bit more buddy buddy for the last eight months or so.
Trump and Musk recently met in Florida, as the former was courting many potential campaign donors. The Don is currently running a very expensive presidential campaign, but also owes over $500 million after recent judgements in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case and a New York fraud case.
In spite of Musk’s initial refusal to buy Truth Social, Trump has allegedly continued to insist that the second-richest-man should be the new owner of the site. Honestly, I think I agree. Trump could use the cash infusion to pay his debts for once, and Elon could use the practice running a social media company with much lower stakes. It would be a lot harder for him to completely fuck up Truth Social the way he has with Twitter.