A couple of weeks before the astonishing Feb. 28 White House Oval Office meeting that saw United States President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance scold Ukraine’s leader, Vance told European leaders at the Munich Security Conference: “If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.”
Vance was responding — with humour, he said — to pushback over Elon Musk’s vocal support for Germany’s far-right parties, expressed on X in a livestream event and in a December 2024 German newspaper op-ed.
Newsweek reported that the administration of Germany’s lower house of parliament “is investigating whether Musk’s support for the AfD on the platform where he has 210 million followers could constitute an illegal party donation.”
