Elon Musk met with Donald Trump in Florida this past Sunday, according to a new report from the New York Times. And while it’s not clear what the two men discussed, news of the meeting comes as Musk has ratcheted up his rhetoric against illegal immigration and Trump looks for new sources of cash.
The Elon Musk Twitter Saga, Part 1 of Who Knows?
The Times report doesn’t name a source for the meeting but cites “three people briefed on the meeting.” An account that tracks Musk’s jet on the social media platform BlueSky shows he landed in West Palm Beach on Saturday, March 2, and left the next day.
Musk took to X on Wednesday morning to deny the obvious conclusion many were reaching from the Times report, writing “Just to be super clear, I am not donating money to either candidate for US President.”
And while we’ll take him at his word, there are a lot of different ways to spend money in an election that don’t include “donating money to either candidate,” including through dark money groups that are ostensibly about issues rather than one person, but still wind up helping a particular candidate.
The Tesla CEO previously claimed that he’d never voted for a Republican before 2022, which heavily suggests he never voted for Trump either in 2016 or 2020. But Musk has fully embraced Republican politics in recent years, even if he’s kept Trump at an arm’s length at times.
Musk was an early advocate for Vivek Ramaswamy to become the Republican nominee for president, though Ramaswamy dropped out of the race back in mid-January. Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and long-shot candidate, never put up much of a fight against Trump and has since endorsed the former president.
The billionaire SpaceX CEO may not love Trump personally, but the two men have many shared interests. Trump, for example, wants to unleash U.S. troops on American streets to round up anyone who might look like they’re in the country illegally, a plan that Musk might just agree with.
Musk has created a steady drumbeat of xenophobic nonsense on X in recent months, insisting that illegal immigration is the biggest issue facing the country—an overwhelming potential threat that’s become a fixation for Musk. Oddly, Musk didn’t seem to care much about immigration until about 2023, judging solely from his tweets and public comments. And Musk’s new pet issue puts him at odds with President Joe Biden, who’s not exactly a dove on immigration policy.
“This administration is both importing voters and creating a national security threat from unvetted illegal immigrants,” Musk tweeted late Monday in a tone that’s become typical of the billionaire.
To be clear, non-citizens aren’t allowed to vote in the U.S., so Musk’s insistence that Biden is “importing” voters is flat wrong. But Musk went on to say immigration could create a threat as serious as the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
“It is highly probable that the groundwork is being laid for something far worse than 9/11. Just a matter of time,” Musk continued.
It should be noted that none of the terrorists that carried out the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York were in the country illegally. They all entered on completely legal visas.
Biden has said he’d like to “close” the border if Republicans can get him a bill that addresses the issue. Sen. James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, spent months negotiating a bipartisan bill that’s widely viewed as the toughest immigration reform in a generation. But that legislation was torpedoed by Republicans after Trump made it clear he wants the border to be an issue he can campaign on in the lead-up to November’s presidential election.
And that’s the problem the U.S. now faces. Trump, who’s currently leading Biden in several national polls, thrives in a world of chaos. And Musk might be signing up for precisely that kind of chaotic mission if he starts to support Trump financially.
