Former President Donald Trump has discussed a potential White House advisory role for entrepreneur Elon Musk if he is reelected in November, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal.
The publication, citing people familiar with their discussions, reported that Trump and Musk have held several phone conversations since a meeting in March at the Palm Beach, Florida, home of billionaire Nelson Peltz. Trump hasn’t made any official offer, but a role could give Musk input on policies such as border security and the economy, the Journal said.
Musk has already pledged that he will not donate any money to either major candidate for president, not Trump nor Joe Biden. But the Journal added that the owner of X, formerly Twitter, plans to use his social media power to persuade others in elite business and technology circles not to support Biden.
Trump and Musk clashed in the past
The report is an about-face for the pair, who have had a difficult relationship in the past. Musk served on a business council during Trump’s presidency but left after Trump decided to withdraw the US from the landmark Paris climate agreement. Trump called the Tesla CEO a “bullshit artist” at the time.
The former president suggested to CNBC in March that the pair had overcome those frustrations, saying he had been “friendly” with Musk over the years.
“I’ve helped him when I was president,” Trump said at the time. “I helped him. I’ve liked him.”
Musk runs X, Tesla and SpaceX and has only grown more critical of the Biden administration since he declared in 2022 that he would begin voting for Republicans, saying Democrats had “become the party of division & hate.”
It’s unclear how Trump’s recent attacks on electric vehicles will affect Musk’s support.
A Trump campaign official told The Hill that the former President would be the sole arbiter of “what role an individual plays in his presidency” but did not rule out a position for Musk.
“It has been widely reported, and is demonstrated in a number of ways, that many of the nation’s important leaders in technology and innovation are concerned with the damage done to their industry by Biden’s failure to handle our economy and his moves to overburden innovators with government bureaucracy and unrelenting regulation,” the official told the website.
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