Donald Trump asked billionaire X owner Elon Musk last summer if he wanted to buy Truth Social
- Trump asked Musk to buy the social media site, according to The Washington Post
Elon Musk rejected a request from Donald Trump to buy Truth Social, his renegade social media site, last summer, according to sources quoted today by The Washington Post.
At the time, Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media, was in the middle of a complicated and long-delayed merger process.
The Post’s unnamed sources say Trump told Musk he had only made $200 from the venture.
Musk ultimately rejected the request, the sources said.
The Washington Post quotes anonymous sources as saying that Trump asked Musk to buy Truth Social last year after struggling to turn a profit
Just a few months after the disclosure, Trump Media’s merger partner, Digital World Acquisition Corp., said it had offered to pay an $18 million settlement to the Securities and Exchange Commission if the merger were completed.
The SEC alleged that DWA misled investors, leaving the merger in a precarious position.
But the SEC has since cleared DWA to register a merger, which could eventually allow Trump Media to go public.
Musk previously looked down on Truth Social, tweeting in 2022 that the platform had a “terrible name,” and that it was “time for Trump to tip his hat and sail off into the sunset.”
Trump wasn’t happy about that and soon posted a photo of the two men in the Oval Office with a caption claiming that Musk would be “worthless” without government support for his projects.
“I could have said, ‘Get on your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it,” he bragged.
But Tesla’s CEO increasingly supports the conservative ideology that Trump embraces.
He repeated Trump’s unverified claims that Joe Biden is “importing voters and creating a national security threat through unvetted illegal immigrants.”