Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday that he won’t make any campaign contributions to either former President Donald Trump or incumbent President Joe Biden, following a report that he and Trump met over the weekend.
“Just to be super clear, I am not donating money to either candidate for US President,” Musk wrote on his social media site X.
The New York Times, citing unnamed sources briefed on the meeting, reports that Trump and Musk met Sunday in Florida with other wealthy GOP contributors. The gathering came as Trump gears up for the 2024 general election facing growing financial and legal peril.
If Musk were to plow any of his astronomical wealth into aiding Trump’s rematch campaign to win back the White House against Biden, it could be an important boost to Trump’s political prospects.
Trump himself faces more than half-a-billion dollars in penalties stemming from the civil fraud case against his company in New York and a pair of lawsuits that ended with him being found liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll. That could wipe out the former president’s available cash supply and force him to sell some of his properties. And the web of political groups that support Trump are increasingly strained by legal bills associated with the four different criminal indictments he’s facing.
Musk, meanwhile, is one of the richest people in the world. While he lost the top spot to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos this week in one ranking amid a punishing stretch for Tesla stock, he is still worth close to $200 billion. And his political priorities have increasingly come into alignment with those of Trump and his supporters in recent years, especially when it comes to restricting immigration. In 2022, he advised his social media followers to support Republicans in the midterm elections.