During a rally in Michigan on Saturday, Donald Trump had high praise for Elon Musk, calling the Tesla CEO a “great” and “brilliant guy.”
But the former president added that he didn’t know about the tech billionaire’s reported plan to donate $45 million a month to a pro-Trump super PAC that will support his campaign. The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, reported the plan.
Musk came out with an endorsement of Trump on July 13, the day of the assassination attempt. Although he has repeatedly shown a rightward shift in his politics, the Tesla CEO had been silent on his preferred candidate until recently.
Trump praised Musk at the Saturday rally.
“Elon. I love Elon Musk. Do we love him?” Trump asked a cheering crowd. “I love him.”
The former president said that “we have to make life good for our smart people” like Musk but added that he didn’t know about the large donation plan and only read the report about it.
“I read — I didn’t even know this, he didn’t even tell me about it, but he gives me $45 million a month,” Trump said. “I talked to him just a little while ago to say, ‘I was coming here. How you doing?’ And he didn’t even mention it.”
Musk and a spokesperson for Trump did not return a request for comment from Business Insider.
After the Journal published the story about Musk’s donation plans, Musk responded with a meme with the caption, “FAKE GNUS.” However, he also responded “Yeah” to a post from an X account that said, “Elon Musk went from being an Obama voter to pledging $180 million to elect DJT. The woke left really f*cked up. Badly.”
On the surface, Musk’s increasing gravitation toward Trump would appear at odds with their own interests: one runs a successful electrical vehicle company that has benefited from government subsidies, while the other is making EVs a political sticking point.
During the Saturday rally, Trump said he thinks electric cars are “incredible, but they’re not for everybody.”
“Some people have to drive long distances, and they tend to be more expensive,” he said.
The former president said later in the rally that he plans to eliminate the “electric vehicle mandate on day one,” even though the Biden administration has not implemented such a mandate.
Some critics say the stricter emissions regulations issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in March force automakers to make electric vehicles a large part of their sales.
Still, the Journal reported that Trump’s appraisal of electric vehicles in recent weeks while bashing any potential government mandate around them represents a shift in tone from the former president.
Musk, for his part, has given Trump his platform back on Twitter-turned-X — though Trump has only posted on the account a few times — and said earlier this week that he supports taking away government subsidies.
“Take away the subsidies. It will only help Tesla,” Musk said on X on July 16. “Also, remove subsidies from all industries.”
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