Looking for a strong financial injection
Trump is targeting Musk – as a donor
March 6, 2024, 6:35 a.m
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Elections in the USA are expensive. In the last election campaign alone, several billion went into financing the campaigns of Biden and Trump. In view of his possible re-candidacy, Trump is already looking for financially strong donors – and has probably set his sights on the Tesla boss.
According to a newspaper report, Donald Trump is looking for a strong donor for his campaign for the White House. Trump met with Tesla boss Elon Musk and several wealthy Republican donors in Florida over the weekend, the New York Times newspaper reported, citing three people familiar with the matter. He is looking for a strong financial injection for his presidential campaign. Neither Musk nor Trump’s campaign office initially commented when asked by the Reuters news agency.
Trump’s personal fortune has been hit by verdicts against him in a New York fraud trial and a separate defamation trial. Further judgments are still pending.
The two eccentrics had already been offended in the past. In 2017, Musk resigned from two economic advisory boards because Trump wanted to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Leaving the agreement would not be good for America and the world, the Tesla boss said at the time. In the summer of 2022 there was a verbal argument between the two. During the midterm elections, Musk and the former president traded insults, with Trump throwing around profanities. Musk then advised that it was time for the former president to “sail off into the sunset.”
Not like the other billionaires
So far, Musk has not commented on whether he would financially support Trump’s candidacy for the White House. His companies Tesla and SpaceX regularly benefit from orders and subsidies from the US government. Unlike other U.S. billionaires, he has never spent much money on a presidential election, and his donations in recent years have been evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.
However, the South African-born Tesla boss has indicated on social media that he is against a second term for incumbent President Joe Biden. According to Forbes magazine, the billionaire has an estimated net worth of around $200 billion.
Elections in the USA are expensive. Four years ago they even reached a new record. Republicans and Democrats spent around $14 billion to collect votes, of which $6.6 billion was spent on the duel between Biden and Trump. The remaining money goes to campaigns for seats in the Senate and House of Representatives.