As Donald Trump approaches victory in the US presidential election, there is a man standing next to him cheering him on. Elon Musk became the star of Trump’s campaign, both offline and online, shortly after a failed assassination attempt against the former US president during a rally, but the two didn’t always get along.
In fact, Elon Musk supported Donald Trump’s rivals Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
Elon Musk and Joe Biden: What happened?
Musk, who previously described himself as “half Democrat and half Republican,” began attacking US President Joe Biden and his administration over their policies shortly after his election.
The relationship soured further in 2021 when he took to Twitter, now X, to complain that his company Tesla had not been invited to a White House summit on the future of electric cars even though it sells 74% of all electric cars in the country.
In September 2021, after an all-civilian spaceflight launch, Musk criticized Biden when asked why he had not yet congratulated SpaceX. “He’s still asleep,” Musk said in a sarcastic post on Channel X.
Musk also criticized Biden’s support for labor unions and said he was unable to “accomplish much.”
In 2022, he said Musk criticized the Democratic Party as a “party of division and hate” and said he would switch to the Republican side. But he continued to criticize the Republican Party’s top candidate – Donald Trump.
(Read also: Where is Joe Biden now? This is how the US president spent election night)
From critic to confidant: Musk and Trump
Before Donald Trump was elected to power in 2016, Musk criticized the Republican candidate and said he was not the right man for the job. He added: “I feel a little stronger because maybe he’s not the right guy. He doesn’t seem to have the personality that reflects well on the United States.”
In 2022, he opined that Trump should abandon his re-election bid: “I don’t hate the guy, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat and ride off into the sunset.”
He said a Trump presidency would be “too much drama.” “Do we really want a bull in a china shop every day!?” he had said.
However, the relationship between the two became more cordial after Musk bought Twitter and restored the former president’s account. Over the next two years, Musk stopped short of endorsing Trump, calling the decision a “difficult choice,” but that changed in the run-up to this year’s election when Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania.
“I fully support President Trump and hope for his speedy recovery,” he wrote in a post on X hours after the attack. In October, Trump returned to Pennsylvania for another rally, and this time, Musk was by his side, supporting him. Wearing a black “Make America Great Again” hat, he warned that if Trump loses, this could be his last election and it is necessary to vote for him to save American democracy.
He also claimed that if Kamala Harris wins, she will shut down X and put him in prison for supporting Trump and his campaign. Today, Musk declared Trump the winner of the 2024 presidential election on Day X. “The American people have given Donald Trump a crystal clear mandate for change tonight,” he wrote.
