Former President Donald Trump and different Republican leaders need Elon Musk to talk on the Republican Nationwide Conference in Milwaukee, CNBC reported Friday, citing nameless sources accustomed to the matter.
The hope is {that a} Musk conference speech would assist elevate the get together’s lackluster assist amongst youthful voters, who are inclined to lean Democratic by important margins. In 2020, the get together tried one thing related by having Charlie Kirk, the founder and CEO of the conservative youth group Turning Level USA, give the conference’s opening speech.
If Musk does converse in favor of Trump in July, he would tackle a task just like that of enterprise capitalist Peter Thiel, who spoke on the 2016 conference. To this point, Thiel—who co-founded PayPal with Musk—has mentioned that he’s sitting out the 2024 race, arguing that the primary Trump administration was “crazier” and “extra harmful” than he’d anticipated.
CNBC wasn’t in a position to report whether or not Trump or any of his associates have straight raised the prospect with Musk, however one supply did be aware that new RNC chair Michael Whatley and co-chair Lara Trump will each possible be behind the concept of inviting Musk to Milwaukee.
The information comes days after Musk traveled to Florida to satisfy with Trump, who’s desperately searching for an injection of marketing campaign money as he stares down the barrel of a major fundraising drawback towards his possible common election opponent, President Joe Biden. On Wednesday, after information of the assembly broke, Musk took to X, previously Twitter, to tell his 175 million followers that, “simply to be tremendous clear, I’m not donating cash to both candidate for US President.” (Although he didn’t say it explicitly, he was clearly referring to Trump and Biden.)
Although Musk began telling his followers in 2022 to vote for Republicans, he’s maintained an ambivalent and generally acrimonious relationship with Trump. The Tesla CEO criticized the previous president’s determination in 2017 to withdraw from the Paris local weather accords, and the 2 went after one another in the summertime of 2022, with Musk saying that it was “time for Trump to hold up his hat & sail into the sundown.” Earlier than Trump secured a digital lock on the GOP nomination, Musk made approving remarks concerning the abortive candidacies of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and likewise hosted a web-based occasion with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
However Musk’s Wednesday remark doesn’t essentially settle the difficulty of whether or not he’ll financially assist Trump’s re-election bid, because it leaves the door open to him contributing a few of his near-$200 million fortune to a pro-Trump PAC or nonprofit. (Musk, furthermore, has a historical past of breaking public guarantees, as Enterprise Insider noted Wednesday.)
And even when Musk doesn’t donate on to Trump’s re-election effort, he’ll possible contribute through his mammoth social media following, to which he has steadily fed a weight loss plan of right-wing conspiracies over the previous yr. In simply the final week alone, Musk speculated that the Biden administration’s immigration insurance policies amounted to “treason” and accused it of “importing voters” to put the groundwork “for one thing far worse than 9/11.”
On Friday night time, Musk posted a photoshopped picture of Biden placing a Presidential Medal of Freedom on Jhoan Boada, a Venezuelan migrant whose face was plastered throughout right-wing media after he was mistakenly identified as a participant in an assault of two New York law enforcement officials. Sadly for Musk, readers added a neighborhood be aware to the put up, noting that Boada “was misidentified as a suspect and has been exonerated off [sic] all fees.”
