Musk 'never told me' about $45m donation pledge: Trump
“I have a good relationship with him, I think he’s a nice guy,” former president says of Tesla CEO
July 25, 2024
Former US president Donald Trump has confirmed that Elon Musk never told him that he would pledge 45 million dollars a month to support presidential campaign days after the Tesla CEO denied Wall Street Journals' reports that he would do so.
“I have a good relationship with him, I think he’s a nice guy,” Trump said of Musk during an interview on Fox News.
“Somebody told me he was going to give me 45 million [dollars] a month. I said, 'That sounds like a lot, even for Elon, that’s a lot,’" the former president said.
The Republican presidential nominee added that Musk never told him of pledging $45 million a month for his campaign.
“But he did say ‘I strongly endorse you,’ despite the fact that I’m against the electric car mandate,” he added.
Musk’s approval of Trump came after the Republican survived an assassination attempt at an election campaign rally in Butler Pennsylvania on July 13.
The WSJ, two days after the rally incident, reported that the SpaceX CEO has plans to donate 45 million dollars to a pro-Trump super PAC that is newly formed.
However, Musk later denied the claims in an interview with Jordan Peterson stating that the figure reported by WSJ was “simply not true”.
“I’m not donating $45 million a month to Trump,” Musk stated.
In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Tuesday, Musk revealed that he is making donations to America PAC but on a lower level.
The next day Musk attended Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress after being invited by the PM in Capitol Hill and reinstated that he pledged to donate $45 million a month to Trump’s campaign.
“At no point did I say that I was donating $45 million a month to Trump. That was a fiction made up by the Wall Street Journal,” Musk said.
Musk has previously stated on his X account that he would not give money to any of the candidate's presidential campaign. However, it is an open statement and Musk can make indirect contributions to any of the campaigns as he confirmed he will now do.
