Musk’s interview with Trump shows how they put aside differences

It certainly wasn’t love at first sight. In fact, they didn’t like each other very much not so long ago.

“I don’t hate the man,” Elon Musk tweeted in July 2022, “but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat and sail off into the sunset.”

The Tesla and Space-X founder’s comment was sparked by a profane insult from Donald Trump – simply put, calling Musk a liar. Trump accused Musk of lying to him about who he voted for in the last presidential election.

“Elon will not buy Twitter,” Trump crowed before a rally in Alaska.

Of course, Musk bought Twitter a few months later – and then supported Trump’s Republican arch-rival Ron DeSantis. The governor of Florida even launched his presidential campaign with a buggy chat on Twitter Spaces.

But over the past few months, the relationship between Musk and Trump has not only thawed – it has reached a warm and steady simmer.

The two are expected to meet for a social on Monday. The exact time, format and length are not yet known, but it is very likely that the interview will air on Musk’s renamed X.

Both men hope the debate reaches an audience beyond the hyperactive pay-per-view users who dominate the X debate these days – and that it remains free of the technical glitches that have marred DeSantis’ ill-fated campaign.

The relationship between the technology magnate and the Republican candidate has been developing for quite some time.

Mr Musk, who became a US citizen in 2002, said he had voted almost exclusively for the Democrats for decades.

But he was sour on President Biden over unions – Musk opposes efforts to organize his autoworkers – and over being rebuffed. He was not invited to the 2021 Electric Vehicle Summit at the White House, even though Tesla is one of the world’s largest electric carmakers.

Under the Biden administration, Musk’s companies have also faced a series of federal investigations into his employment practices, his acquisition of Twitter and allegations about Tesla’s Autopilot feature.

In November 2023, he said in an interview with the New York Times that he would not vote for Biden again, but would not support Trump: “This is definitely a difficult decision here.”

After purchasing the company, Mr Musk unbanned the former president’s Twitter account.

And perhaps more importantly, during his time at the company, he has become increasingly involved in issues that dovetail well with Trump’s campaign: government censorship and persecution, complaints about the media, opposition to immigration and anger over “woke” ideas.

“He is a greedy attention seeker and a political chameleon,” said Ryan Broderick, who Internet culture newsletter Garbage Day.

Mr Broderick said Mr Musk’s online posts had changed dramatically several years ago.

“Until about 2018, he was tweeting neoliberal, carefree things and Pride flags and so on, and after that the change was pretty drastic,” he said.

Since taking over Twitter, Musk has increasingly become involved in political controversies and spreading inflammatory – and sometimes downright false – news.

During the recent unrest in Britain, he clashed with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, claiming that “civil war is inevitable” and publishing a false post about “internment camps” in the Falkland Islands.

He also believed Trump’s claim – for which there is no evidence whatsoever – that electoral fraud was widespread in the United States.

Investigations by the Center for Countering Digital Hate – an organization that attempted to sue Musk in a case dismissed earlier this year – found that Musk has tweeted false or misleading election statements 50 times so far this year.

And he regularly interacts with fringe figures, right-wing extremist personalities and pro-Trump accounts on his own platform, thereby increasing their reach.

At the same time, his connection to Silicon Valley connects him to Trump’s inner circle. Musk was a member of the so-called PayPal Mafia – shareholders who made a fortune when they bought the payment service provider for $1.5 billion and later became successful investors and company founders.

PayPal founder Peter Thiel is an influential Republican who later hired JD Vance for his venture capital firm Mithril Capital Management and subsequently funded his Senate campaign in Ohio with a $10 million donation.

In March, Musk met Trump at his resort in Florida. A few months later, Musk hosted an “anti-Biden” dinner party, according to US news reports, where Thiel and Rupert Murdoch were among the guests.

Mr. Musk has donated money to both Democratic and Republican politicians in the past. Although he insists he does not donate directly to a presidential campaign, he recently co-founded a pro-Trump action committee, America PAC.

Political action committees have the leeway to spend enormous sums of money supporting candidates and causes – although Mr Musk has said reports that he would give $45 million a month to the PAC were exaggerated.

Yet his support for Trump was already fully assured just minutes after the former president’s assassination attempt last month, when he tweeted: “I fully support President Trump and hope for his speedy recovery.”

Trump, for his part, seems to have reconciled with Mr Musk.

At a press conference on Thursday, he said: “I respect Elon very much. He respects me.”

“Elon loves this country more than almost anyone I know. He loves the concept of this country, but he says, as I do, that this country is in big trouble, that it is in enormous danger,” Trump said.

Musk has become a hero to an online group of young, mostly male supporters who share Trump’s ideas but are reportedly less reliable voters.

The Trump campaign appears to be targeting this segment of the population, with the former president recently giving an interview to “edgy” podcaster Adin Ross, who has been repeatedly banned from the streaming site Twitch for violating the site’s code of conduct.

“Donald Trump is in turmoil because he’s looking for a way to rejuvenate his campaign,” Broderick said. “He’s a showman and he understands that Elon Musk has similar instincts.”

However, he doubted that the two would get along in person.

“I suspect they’ll talk past each other and probably it won’t make much sense,” he said. “And maybe someone will say something crazy.”

The BBC has contacted X and the Trump campaign team for comment.

The interview is expected to appear online on Monday evening.