The world’s richest man, once deeply sceptical of Donald Trump, has now endorsed him and has emerged as a central character in the presidential race.
A little over two months ago, Elon Musk found himself at Montsorrel, the palatial Palm Beach compound of Nelson Peltz, a famed activist investor. Musk knew the sprawling grounds well, having stayed in the guesthouse at the Florida property.
The topic of conversation was a bit different than usual, though: Peltz had brought together a group of billionaire conservative financiers – including Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas casino magnate, and hedge-funder John Paulson – to dive into concerns about whether Republicans could seize Senate control, as well as the party’s weak ground game, according to a person with direct knowledge of what transpired.
But Musk had a darker message that spring day. He told the group that this would be the last free election in America – because if President Joe Biden won, millions of people living in the country illegally would be legalised and democracy would be finished, according to the person.
Former President Donald Trump had to win, Musk said. He dispensed some advice for the veteran financiers, who had decades more experience in Republican politics than he did: Their emphasis on political advertising was misplaced, he said. Tesla, his electric car company, barely advertises, he said, but had still built a cult following through word of mouth. Why couldn’t Republicans do the same?
The most important thing that the financiers could do, Musk said, was ask two people to support Trump, and urge them to ask two more. Two people by two people – that’s how the former president would win.
Musk has transformed himself from an idealistic supporter of Democrats like Barack Obama into a fierce ally of Trump, whom he flirted with for months and endorsed last weekend roughly 30 minutes after the former president survived an assassination attempt.
In fact, Trump’s campaign at one point had talked with Musk about him delivering remarks at this week’s Republican National Convention. Musk said Thursday that he was not speaking.
Musk is more comfortable than ever revealing his conservative sympathies. But the role that he has played in supporting Republicans financially is not widely known, in part because he has tried to avoid making public donations.
He has emerged as a central character in the presidential race, targeted by the Biden campaign and celebrated as an almost mythical figure by Trump’s advisers. Angry at liberals over immigration, transgender rights and the Biden administration’s perceived treatment of Tesla, the mercurial Musk has undergone a midlife reinvention that has many Republicans salivating about him as the party’s moneymaker – if only he will deliver.
This article is based on interviews with about two dozen of Musk’s political associates, friends and Republican Party allies, many of whom insisted on anonymity to disclose private conversations. Musk and his aides did not respond to requests for comment.
Woody Johnson, a preeminent Republican fundraiser and Trump’s former ambassador to Britain, said he welcomed Musk into the party as an ideological convert.
“Explore all ideas – and come up with the best one,” Johnson quipped in an interview. “There’s nobody in the world like Musk. We’re lucky as Americans to have him. He is the most innovative – besides Trump.”
Dismissing Trump as a ‘stone-cold loser’
Musk was once allergic to Washington. He maintained a decent relationship with Obama and made several White House visits to build support for Tesla and SpaceX, his rocket manufacturer. But he generally disliked meeting with other politicians and saw political donations as a necessary evil, according to four people who worked with him.
Days before the 2016 election, he told CNBC that Trump did not “seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.” After Trump won, Musk told some associates that the outcome was proof that they were living in a simulation, according to one person close to him. In 2020, in a private conversation with another associate, Musk called Trump a “stone-cold loser.”
In 2022, the former president, for his part, used an expletive to describe the Tesla CEO at a rally.
Musk also predicted that Trump’s days as a political force were finished, according to a private message that was viewed by The New York Times, as he prepared to voice support for Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose campaign he helped kick off in 2023.
Big promises, little follow-through
Musk has become an obsession of many Trump officials and Republican fundraisers, who see him as the party’s next great hope – or a meal ticket for themselves. But over the years, he has acquired a reputation in political circles as something of a flake.
Some conservative activists said they wished that Musk had followed through more on promises to fund free speech lawsuits by people who believed that they had been censored on social media.
Musk can be hard to pin down, and rumours fly about him in Republican circles. In 2023, when Kevin McCarthy was elected as House speaker, the California politician gave a party at the Library of Congress, and some aides were told until shortly beforehand to expect Musk to show up and speak. But he didn’t, disappointing some in the crowd, a person involved in the event recalled.
Musk has also been unreliable in local politics. He wrote last year on his social platform, X, that he planned to donate US$100,000 ($165,000) to GrowSF, a centrist group in San Francisco,so it could help defeat a progressive city official. But Musk did not donate or even contact the group, said Steven Buss, one of GrowSF’s founders.
An embrace of dark money
Musk has said that he tries to stay out of politics, and he has not donated to a federal political group since the 2020 cycle, according to campaign finance records. He has gone to great lengths to avoid leaving a public footprint of the contributions he does make.
Indeed, he learned a tough lesson when he made his largest disclosed gift ever, a US$50,000 donation in 2017, to the McCarthy Victory Fund, a group aligned with McCarthy. The disclosure of that donation angered liberals. He learned from that experience to prioritise giving to dark-money organisations, a person familiar with his thinking recalled.
In recent communications with Republicans, Musk and his associates have expressed a desire not to make political contributions to groups whose donations must be legally disclosed. He told a friend a few months ago that he wanted to find a way to support Trump but didn’t want to do it publicly, the friend recalled.
During the Republican presidential primary race, Musk’s team had detailed talks with allies of Vivek Ramaswamy about making a major donation to a dark-money group backing the entrepreneur’s candidacy, according to a person briefed on the talks. Musk attended two fundraisers for Ramaswamy, in California and Texas, two people briefed said, but he ultimately declined to cut a cheque.
In 2023, he strongly considered making a significant political donation to the American Action Network, a 501(c) (4) dark-money group steered by McCarthy’s political operation, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions. It’s not clear if he gave.
The tug of war
As Musk sought help on politics, the people he turned to sought to influence him.
He had gotten to know McCarthy over the last decade thanks to the former speaker’s advocacy for SpaceX. They now text frequently, and Musk has often relied on McCarthy over the years for advice on politics and lobbying.
McCarthy has been eager to highlight his relationship with Musk, and has gone to great lengths to cultivate him, according to people familiar with their relationship.
He interviewed the billionaire at an exclusive conference in Sea Island, Georgia, hosted by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and invited Musk to headline a fundraising retreat for McCarthy’s donors in Wyoming. Musk also flew to Washington for the congressman’s birthday last year.
McCarthy has helped develop Musk’s relationship with Trump, but he has not been alone. Three close friends of the former president – Peltz, Wynn and Steve Witkoff, whose firm invested in the billionaire’s Twitter takeover – plus Musk’s emerging confidant, Diesel Peltz, a son of Nelson Peltz – have played a role in encouraging Musk to draw close to Trump, according to people familiar with the relationships. Musk also talks frequently with Ramaswamy, who has become a Trump surrogate, another person said.
Wynn said in an interview that Musk was “dedicating himself to making sure this election ends up properly” but downplayed his own role.
“He did that without my help,” he said. “Elon is a self-propelled rocket.”
Some of Musk’s friends in Silicon Valley have also bent his ear, including members of the so-called PayPal Mafia, a group of early executives at the payments company that includes Trump donors David Sacks and Ken Howery, the people said.
Musk used to live primarily in Los Angeles, but people close to him said his politics had been shaped by his more conservative social circle in his new home state of Texas. Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir who lives in Texas, and his aides have spent considerable time with Musk talking about politics, and Musk has told others that he is worried about what would happen to his businesses if Texas went blue, the people said.
But some of Musk’s more liberal friends and associates have expressed unhappiness to him about his rightward drift, according to three people familiar with the situation. Some said they have received private assurances from Musk that he is not donating to support Trump.
The extremist direction of Musk has bothered his own high-profile, celebrity lawyer, Alex Spiro, according to two people who have spoken to him. Spiro, who declined to comment, has encouraged Musk not to alienate Democrats from his businesses, citing the famous quip from Michael Jordan that “Republicans buy sneakers, too,” one of the people said.
The final turn to Trump
It appears those liberal friends are losing the tug of war. Musk met with Trump in March and now talks with him directly on occasion, according to people familiar with the relationship. The two have spoken about electric vehicles, as well as technology like so-called deepfake videos, the former president has told donors who relayed his remarks.
During the Trump term, Musk once asked his top executives at Tesla how many of them had voted for Trump and was alarmed to hear that none of them had, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting.
“I have had some conversations with him, and he does call me out of the blue for no reason,” Musk said last month at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting.
Musk and Sacks organised a private dinner this spring in Los Angeles with several other anti-Biden billionaires, who talked about ways to oppose Biden’s reelection.
Whether Musk might financially support the Republican ticket has flummoxed Trump’s aides. For much of this year, Musk entertained to friends the notion of an endorsement, or at least urging his followers explicitly not to vote for Biden, according to two people who spoke directly with Musk. The billionaire told these people that he wanted to wait until the president formally captured the Democratic nomination before he made a proclamation.
Then came the assassination attempt.
Within an hour of the shooting, Musk went on X and endorsed Trump.
Lonsdale has helped start a new super political action committee that its donors say will fund an aggressive field programme to aid Trump, and several of Musk’s close friends have pooled their millions behind the group. The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had spoken of donating US$45 million ($64.5m) per month to the group – energising both the Trump and Biden teams. But Musk has told people close to him that the figure is false, and while people close to the group said that while they expect him to give, they don’t know how much.
In recent weeks, Musk privately lobbied Trump to choose Senator JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate. He celebrated vociferously Monday after Vance was announced as the pick.
Trevor Traina, a Republican fundraiser in San Francisco who served in the Trump administration and knows Musk socially, said he saw parallels between the two men.
“He has had to walk the same road as Trump – silenced, targeted, cancelled – and within the last couple weeks,” Traina said of Musk, “he has decided it’s time to take action.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Theodore Schleifer and Ryan Mac
Photographs by: Max Whittaker, Kenny Holston, Haiyun Jiang, Tamir Kalifa and Doug Mills
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
