Donald Trump has got Elon Musk on his radar for a top spot in his administration if he wins the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
In a recent interview, Trump shared that Elon could be up for a cabinet position or some big advisory role. The two men have been getting pretty chummy lately, which is something not a lot of people saw coming.
Elon, who wasn’t exactly Trump’s biggest fan a few years ago, seems to have warmed up to him, especially after that wild assassination attempt on Trump in July.
After the dust settled, Elon gave Trump a massive platform by interviewing him on X (formerly Twitter), which Elon claims racked up over a billion views.
Relationship timeline
Elon and Trump’s relationship has been all over the place, to say the least. Back in 2016, just before the election, Elon didn’t think Trump was fit to be president.
He said outright that Trump didn’t have the right character to represent the U.S., and he was way more in favor of Hillary Clinton’s policies.
But things changed after Trump won. In December 2016, Elon was pulled into Trump’s orbit when he got tapped for two of the president’s economic advisory councils.
Elon defended his decision to join, saying he wanted to influence Trump on important issues like the environment and immigration.
But that didn’t last long. By June 2017, Elon had enough and walked away after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Elon was pissed, tweeting that climate change is real and leaving Paris was a bad move for America and the world.
The dynamic changes again
Came 2020 and Trump was singing a different tune about Elon. He called him “one of our great geniuses” and gave him props for making Tesla a big deal in the auto industry.
During the pandemic, when Elon was battling California officials to reopen Tesla’s factory, Trump had Elon’s back, showing support for Elon’s push to get back to work. It looked like the two were getting on the same page again.
But then of course, in May 2022, when Elon hinted that he would reinstate Trump’s Twitter account if he got the chance, it showed he was aligning more with Trump on the free speech front.
Then, a couple of months later, things got weird. Trump called Elon a “bullshit artist” at a rally, accusing him of lying about his voting history. The billionaire shot back, saying Trump should just “sail away into the sunset.”
Yeah, that didn’t go over well, and it seemed like their relationship was going down the tubes again. By July 2022, Elon was saying that Trump shouldn’t run for president again, but he made it clear he didn’t have any personal beef with him.
Now, here we are in 2024, and Elon is all in with Trump after that assassination attempt. Elon even went public with his endorsement, which was a huge turnaround from his earlier stance.
Word on the street is that Elon and Trump have been chatting a lot, talking about everything from immigration policies to tech innovations.
