Elon Musk’s Trump rally appearance just sealed his legacy

Story by Ayman Mohyeldin and Andrew Kenlon and Allison Detzel. October 7, 2024.

  • Elon Musk’s Promise: Musk initially vowed to keep Twitter1 politically neutral, aiming to upset both the far right and far left equally2.
  • Political Involvement: Despite his promise, Musk endorsed Republican candidates and voiced support for Ron DeSantis and later Donald Trump.
  • Feud with Trump: Musk and Trump had a public feud, with Trump mocking Musk’s campaign efforts and Musk criticizing Trump’s age3,4.
  • Shift in Stance: Musk eventually endorsed Trump and donated to a political group supporting him, despite earlier criticisms.

Two years ago, when billionaire Elon Musk bought what was once called Twitter, he vowed to keep it a nonbiased platform. In fact, that was his mission statement. Just days after purchasing the platform, Musk said, “For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.”

  1. X/Twitter – Musk has this obsession with the letter ‘X’: SpaceX, after remaining Twitter, a known social media platform since 2006, to X in 2023, nobody knows what to call it. I’ve started calling it X/Twitter; that covers both bases. It wouldn’t surprise me if Musk rebranded Tesla as X/Tesla, or Tesla/X. Hmm, maybe I should trademark those derivations… ↩

  2. @RalphHightower: Yeah, yeah. And the check is in the mail5. ↩

  3. As a matter of fact, Elon Musk said that Trump should ‘hang up his hat and sail into the sunset,’ too old to run for president again, as reported in The Washington Post on July 12, 2022 at 9:46 a.m. EDT, by.Timothy Bella. ↩

  4. @RalphHightower: Did Trump find the “Fountain of Youth” that Ponce de Leon was looking for? Trump Trump ain’t getting younger days by day. In fact, various news media, with the exception of perhaps Faux News, have finally begun reporting on the mental decline of Trump; that his “tossed salad of words” has become increasingly incoherent. ↩

  5. “The check is in the mail” is a euphemism that often used in a dismissive or sarcastic context, suggesting that the speaker is avoiding responsibility or is unreliable. ↩