Will Musk bankroll Trump? Billionaire holds meeting with ex-president as he considers whether to throw his $200b fortune behind efforts to remove Biden from White House

A meeting between Elon Musk and Donald Trump has fueled speculation that the Tesla boss is set to finance the presidential candidate’s campaign.

The two met on Sunday in Palm Beach, Florida, along with some wealthy Republican donors, the newspaper said New York Times.

Trump and his team are desperate for a cash injection to boost his presidential campaign.

Musk is currently the second richest man in the world, with an estimated fortune of $200 billion.

The former president has personally praised the tech mogul to his allies and hopes to secure a one-on-one meeting soon, a source said.

Although he has not endorsed any candidate, Musk has been highly critical of the Biden administration lately.

On Tuesday, he reshared an article on DailyMail.com detailing how 320,000 unvetted migrants had been allowed into the US, warning that it is “highly likely to be laying the groundwork for something far worse than September 11.”

Those close to Musk also confirmed that he believes Biden should be removed from office in November, the NYT said.

However, his relationship with Trump was previously somewhat tumultuous.

In 2017, he stepped down from two business advisory boards following Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.

In 2022, Trump called him a curse, to which Musk responded that it was time for the ex-president to “sail into the sunset.”

Unlike other billionaires, Musk has not spent much money on political donations and has previously given to both Republicans and Democrats.

He has personally provided funding to politicians such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Marco Rubio, George W. Bush and John Kerry.

His companies Tesla and SpaceX have benefited from federal government contracts and subsidies.

In recent years, however, Musk has seemingly leaned more toward the Republican Party.

This may be partly due to a criticism from the Biden administration in 2021 after they failed to invite Tesla to an electric vehicle summit.

“Let’s not forget that the White House killed Tesla and excluded us from the EV summit,” Musk wrote in December, more than two years after the trick.

The following year, he encouraged his followers on X, formerly Twitter, to vote in a Republican Congress before the midterm elections.

But even before that he was revealed as one of the largest donors to a PAC aimed at retaining Congress Republicans in power in the House of Representatives in 2018.

More recently, he appeared to criticize podcast host Bill Maher, who said he would vote for Biden over Trump under almost any circumstance.

“Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a very real disease,” Musk wrote on X on Monday.

After purchasing the social media platform in 2022, he reinstated Trump’s account after it was suspended after January 6.

Musk has generally spoken out against the left’s “woke” policies and has repeated right-wing rhetoric on immigration.

“America will fall if it tries to absorb the world,” Musk wrote on X on Tuesday.

He also suggested that Democrats are “bringing in large numbers of illegal aliens” to commit voter fraud, despite there being no evidence to support this.

Musk has responded scathingly to Biden, asking questions about his age and joking that he was “still asleep” after failing to congratulate one of his companies.

But his support for Trump was far from guaranteed. In 2015, Musk said it would be “embarrassing” if Trump were nominated as the Republican nominee for president, a criticism he repeated before Election Day.

During this election cycle, there were early indications that he may have endorsed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis started his campaign with a live-streamed interview with the billionaire, but this did not result in a donation.