New Twitter owner Elon Musk said he’d reverse Donald Trump’s permanent ban. But months ago the ex-president and the Tesla CEO were exchanging barbs on Twitter and Truth Social and bickering over Ron DeSantis. Here’s how their chaotic feud unfolded.
Elon Musk struck a deal to buy Twitter in late April and quickly confirmed that he intended to lift the site’s permanent ban on Donald Trump. As Twitter sued Musk for trying to renege on the $44 billion deal, a feud broke out between two of our most volatile rich dudes. On Thursday, the Musk-Twitter deal finally went through, and Trump publicly celebrated the Tesla–SpaceX–Boring Company CEO’s acquisition of the social media giant – though he insisted that Truth Social will remain the exclusive home of his social-media ramblings.
So what exactly went wrong between Musk and Trump? Are they back on good terms? And how is the public supposed to follow this fight when one of the participants only posts his “truths” on a site barely anyone uses? Here’s a guide to how it all went down, which we’ll continue to update as long as this chaotic duo keeps at it.
As president, Trump regularly lashed out at CEOs who crossed him, but somehow Musk stayed on his good side even as he repeatedly disparaged Trump’s policies and personality.
Days before the 2016 election, Musk told CNBC that he generally agreed with Hillary Clinton’s economic and environmental plans. His assessment of Trump was harsher. “I feel a bit stronger that he is not the right guy,” Musk said. “He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.”
And early in Trump’s presidency, Musk criticized the “Muslim ban.”
The blanket entry ban on citizens from certain primarily Muslim countries is not the best way to address the country’s challenges— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2017
Nevertheless, the CEO went on to join two of Trump’s business-advisory councils — only to quit in protest.
Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 1, 2017
In August 2019, Musk said he supported Democrat Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign. That still didn’t keep Trump from heaping praise on the tech billionaire at Davos in January 2020, calling him in a CNBC interview “one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius.” He continued, “You know, we have to protect Thomas Edison, and we have to protect all of these people that came up with originally the lightbulb and the wheel and all of these things. And he’s one of our very smart people, and we want to cherish those people.”
In the final year of his presidency, Trump found himself increasingly in agreement with Musk over “Twitter, the moon, and sticking it to the establishment,” as Politico put it. In May 2020, Trump defended Musk’s calls to reopen Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California, which had been closed because of COVID restrictions; then he headed to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center to watch a SpaceX rocket launch two NASA astronauts.
