Elon Musk has pretty much professed his undying love to former president Donald Trump, acting as a mouthpiece for the presidential candidate on social media and even reportedly spending big money on his campaign. Despite all this, Trump still doesn’t really like Elon Musk. In fact, he sort of hates him and thinks he’s weird. Ouch.
Musk promptly endorsed Trump after a failed assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally in July, and since then he has raised millions for his campaign through the America PAC, according to Rolling Stone. In just the past two weeks it has poured $16 million into outreach for the campaign – a big help for a candidate with a really weak ground game.
Here’s a little more from Rolling Stone on how Musk and Trump’s relationship is fraught with awkwardness and a mutual understanding that they both need each other (because there are increasingly fewer other people who will deal with their shit):
According to a person close to the twice-impeached convicted felon, Trump “thinks he’s weird. Sorry to use a word used a lot by Democrats now.” This source has spoken to the former president about Musk as recently as July. Another source, who has been in the room multiple times over the years when Trump has spoken privately about Musk, relays to Rolling Stone that Trump has at times, as recently as in the past few months, said that Musk is “boring,” annoying, and prone to mood swings.
That may sound rich, coming from Donald J. Trump, who is arguably all three of those things to a galling degree. Still, it underscores Trump’s own ability to recognize the inherent weirdness or unpopular traits of some of his most prominent political backers. For instance, Trump has long understood, in a way that many conservative leaders have not, that it is imperative for the GOP’s electoral successes that Republicans relentlessly about what their plans are on abortion, because most Americans find their views repulsive.
In the past, Trump and Musk have publicly feuded, with the former gratuitously insulting the latter, in part because Musk said it was time to move on from Trump in 2022 and supported Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 2024 Republican primary bid.
“When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all his many subsidized projects,” Trump wrote in 2022, “whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it.”
I’ll be so honest with you folks – I think about that tweet from Trump just about every day of my life. Anyway, lest we forget that around the same time as that meeting, Trump also called Musk a “bullshit artist.” Broken clock, and all that.
To be fair, sources tell RS that Trump does say some nicer things privately about Musk. However, Trump’s true (and ruder) feelings still bubble to the top. Recently, Trump described Musk as “a very different kind of guy,” which is apparently not a compliment.
When asked about the reporting on the harsher private words Trump has had for Musk recently, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung simply tells Rolling Stone the former president and Musk “agree on the big issues facing our country, and that Kamala Harris must be stopped before she completely destroys America,” adding: “That’s why so many people from all political backgrounds have united behind President Trump to Make America Great Again.”
This is all very obviously transactional. Trump and his campaign desperately need money and support. Musk brings both those things in spades between the obscene wealth he has amassed and his hoards of deeply passionate fans.
Of course, this isn’t all just a one-way street. Musk would benefit greatly from a second Trump presidency rather than Harris, as Rolling Stone explains:
A Trump victory could be a big financial win for Musk. Harris has proposed a wealth tax on households worth more than $100 million, as well as an increase in the corporate tax rate, which Trump slashed as president. Musk, worth a reported $247 billion, posted on X that Harris’ economic agenda “leads to bread lines and ugly shoes.”
Trump, meanwhile, is pitching to wealthy donors that they need to fund him so he can protect their tax cuts, and cut the corporate tax rate even further.
It’ll be interesting to see where this relationship goes past November. I’m assuming it’ll just get even stranger before then, but once the election passes and the results are known, it’s highly unlikely Trump will see any real need for the CEO.