Over the past few years, former President and current felon Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have become more and more aligned when it comes to political stances. Now, it’s being reported that Musk may actually take some sort of advisory role should Trump be reelected this November.
Musk has been moving further to the right for some time now, and his latest conservative stances have centered around preventing voter fraud that doesn’t exist, immigration and Trump’s legal woes. The Wall Street Journal looked inside the newly formed alliance between Musk and Trump, how it started and where it may end up going.
Musk, along with the billionaire investor Nelson Peltz, has also briefed Trump on a plan they have developed to invest in a data-driven project to prevent voter fraud, according to some of the people. Peltz and Musk also told Trump of an influence campaign in elite circles that is already under way, in which Musk and his political allies host gatherings of powerful business leaders across the country to try to convince them not to support President Biden’s re-election campaign.
As recently as two years ago, Trump and Musk were publicly trading insults. But in recent months, the two men are developing a friendly rapport and talk on the phone several times a month as the election nears, the people familiar with their talks said.
The pair have held discussions on immigration, technology and science, including the U.S. Space Force. Their views and interests have grown more aligned, the people said, with Musk calling Trump directly on his cellphone.
Trump has told Musk, one of the world’s wealthiest people, he wants to find a way to get him more involved if he wins in November.
Musk—who has a long history of flouting convention in the business world—has signaled he isn’t interested in simply writing a check to a super PAC, which can accept unlimited amounts of money from donors and is a popular way for the billionaire class to support candidates. Instead, he has elected to use his clout in elite business and technology circles to help defeat Biden by galvanizing the support of influential allies.
For years now, Musk has told folks he is worried about the direction the country is headed in, mostly because of the “woke mind virus” he loves to talk about on his social media website X. The guy is a shithead.
Trump seems to have taken notice of Musk’s turn to the right despite the fact the CEO has called himself “fairly moderate” and has donated small amounts of money to Democrats and Republicans in past years. Here’s more from the Wall Street Journal:
His politics publicly shifted in May 2022, when he tweeted he would vote Republican because Democrats had “become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them.”
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The discussion around the advisory role and voting project took place at a March gathering at Montsorrel, Peltz’s sprawling oceanfront estate in Palm Beach, Fla., with a group of wealthy and powerful friends, some of the people familiar with the discussions said. The New York Times earlier reported the meeting had occurred, but details of the discussions haven’t been previously disclosed.
As guests nibbled on a Sunday morning breakfast of eggs, bacon and fresh fruit served by Peltz’s household staff, Peltz, Trump and Musk held forth on the November elections, criticizing Biden’s stewardship of the country, the people said.
It was a family affair. Musk and his young son X, who often joins him at events, were part of a group that also included Trump and his 18-year-old son, Barron. Musk and Peltz know each other in part through Peltz’s son Diesel, a tech entrepreneur who is friendly with Musk. Diesel Peltz was at the breakfast as well.
The potential administration advisory gig for Musk would likely be in the mold of the role previously held by Isaac Perlmutter, the former Marvel chairman and confidant to both Peltz and Trump, one of the people said.
During the Trump presidency, Perlmutter was positioned at the Department of Veterans Affairs in an advisory capacity, along with two other members of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida: a Palm Beach doctor and an attorney. The three spoke to the agency’s staff and weighed in on a range of matters, including budgets, mental-health initiatives, software procurement and overhauling the VA’s record-keeping systems.
This is not Musk’s first rodeo when it comes to working with Trump. Back in 2017, he served on White House business advisory groups, but he resigned quickly after disagreeing with Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord.