Then-President Donald Trump acknowledges Elon Musk, right, after the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on May 30, 2020.
Mark Sumner for Daily Kos
Daily Kos Staff
There are “billionaires,” and then there are billionaires. Unfortunately, sometimes they share the same delusions.
On Saturday, watchers of private-jet traffic noticed that Elon Musk’s plane was on the ground at the airport closest to Mar-a-Lago, leading to speculation that the CEO of Tesla might be on hand to meet with the guy who has spent years claiming electric vehicles are a Chinese hoax and that electric cars need to charge every 15 minutes.
On Tuesday evening, The New York Times confirmed that Donald Trump and Elon Musk met on Sunday in West Palm Beach as Trump desperately looks for a way to cover the $540 million he owes for a pair of recent legal judgments. Whether Musk has agreed to pick up the tab for Trump’s fines is unclear, but that he could do so for only about 1.2% of the check he wrote for Twitter shows the huge difference in wealth between the two men.
If democracy was already smoldering, Musk could provide Trump with a flamethrower.
Trump owes $454 million in fines and interest for business fraud in New York and $83 million for his defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump has been unable to get a judge to halt the payments.
In addition to repeatedly declaring that EVs don’t work, and threatening to end tax credits that encourage car buyers to pick EVs, Trump has previously attacked Musk, saying that he would have been “worthless” without government subsidies.
"When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects …,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in July 2022, “I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it.”
That might seem like the kind of statement that might make Musk reluctant to open his wallet. However, not only has Musk been repeatedly spreading a laundry list of Republican conspiracy theories—including backing the “great replacement” claims of white supremacists and false stories that President Joe Biden is allowing millions of migrants into the country so they can vote in the next election—the second-richest man on the planet has several big reasons to support the Republican candidate.
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Tesla has faced repeated issues with safety at its factories, with rates of violations that dwarf other auto manufacturers.
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Tesla’s “self-driving” cars, which Musk has relentlessly promoted for a decade, are part of a growing investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that could result in a major recall and restrictions on Tesla’s system.
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Tesla has been repeatedly sued over racial discrimination, including by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, overrunning an openly hostile and racist workplace.
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Tesla has been targeted by the United Auto Workers, with the union’s president, Shawn Fain, pushing hard to organize workers there and at other nonunion automakers.
To help stop that last one, Musk has recently joined with the third-richest man on the planet in a plan to destroy the National Labor Relations Board. Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos may be rivals in space, but back on the ground, both of them are committed to keeping their workers divided and powerless.
What would keep Musk from agreeing to wipe out Trump’s little half-a-billion-dollar legal problem in exchange for a promise that, should Trump get back in the White House, he will take care of Musk’s issues with racism, safety, and those pesky unions?
Nothing. Sure, it may seem like a bribe—because it’s a bribe—but that’s unlikely to be an issue.
For both men, this could be what Trump might describe as a fantastic deal. Destroying government oversight was already on his agenda, and if the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 needs to be tweaked a little to keep the money flowing to Musk, that can surely be arranged.
In the distant past of 2017, Musk stepped down from a pair of Trump advisory councils in protest of Trump’s stance toward the climate crisis. But the Tesla guy has vanished down a long hallway of self-medication, paranoia, and white nationalism.
According to Tuesday’s New York Times article, Musk believes it’s “essential” that Biden lose the election. And Musk’s support for immigration conspiracy theories, which has recently included describing Biden’s actions as “treason,” might provide nice cover for handing a wad of cash to Trump. But there’s a long, long list of reasons why Musk could benefit from some dedicated neglect on the part of the government.
Musk is among the richest people in history. He wants to make his robots, spaceships, and brain chips without concern about regulations or safety. He wants to be free to discriminate against Black people and treat women like breeding stock. Trump can promise him all that and more.
The Tesla CEO might even choose to pad out the Republican Party’s empty coffers. But that’s pretty much the same thing as sending cash directly to Trump.
Should Musk actively campaign for Trump, he comes with his own set of fanboys who may not completely overlap with Trump’s … though it’s hard to believe that anyone who has stuck with Musk through his recent statements was not already going to check the “R” box on the ballot. It seems fair to say that not every Tesla employee is going to follow Musk’s orders on voting.
Don’t be surprised if Musk cashes that check. But he really should make Trump get on his knees and beg.
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