Donald Trump met with billionaire Elon Musk in Florida over the weekend as the former Republican president seeks a major cash infusion for his re-election campaign, The New York Times reported.
According to the Times, Trump met with Musk – one of the world’s richest people – and a number of wealthy Republican donors on Sunday and hopes to have a one-on-one discussion soon with Musk, the CEO of both Tesla Inc and SpaceX, and the owner-executive chairman of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Neither Musk nor Trump’s campaign immediately responded to requests for comment from the Reuters news agency.
Trump, whose personal fortune took recent hits from judgments against him in a New York civil fraud case and a separate defamation trial, is aiming to line up additional major contributors to his campaign for president, the Times said.
Musk has not said whether he plans to back Trump financially, but the South African-born billionaire entrepreneur has suggested in social media posts that he is opposed to incumbent Joe Biden – who defeated Trump in 2020 – winning a second term in November.
Musk has long sought to cast himself as politically independent but has previously stated that he voted for Biden in 2020. Since then however, he has criticised the president and clashed with his administration
In November, the White House labelled as “abhorrent” a tweet sent by Musk that was said to show indifference antisemitism. In December, Musk’s mother accused the president of standing in the way of the billionaire’s plans to make the world a better place.
Last year Musk said that he would not vote for Biden again and – according to the Times report – he has made clear that defeating the president is a priority.
With a net worth that Forbes magazine has put at around $200bn, Musk has the resources to almost single-handedly offset the huge financial advantage that Biden and his supporters are otherwise expected to wield over Trump in the 2024 general election campaign.
Financial disclosures filed last month showed Trump’s cash holdings fell to just over $30m as he waged successful Republican primary campaigns, down from around $33m a month earlier, his campaign said in a report to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Biden, who has faced a less competitive process for his Democratic Party’s nomination, said in a separate disclosure to the FEC that his campaign ended January with about $56m in cash, up from $46m in December.
Reuters contributed to this report
