On Saturday, October 5, former President Donald Trump returned to Butler, Pennsylvania, for a rally less than three months after the assassination attempt on his life at the same location. This time, Trump appeared on stage with billionaire and X owner Elon Musk.
Trump supporters loved it.
A day before the campaign event, Musk posted on X that he would be attending. The excitement over his presence was palpable: On the road leading to the rally site, an electronic billboard displayed an image of Musk’s face and a rocket with text that read “In Musk we trust!” On a side street, where hundreds of attendees parked their cars, a Tesla cybertruck sported two Trump flags on the back.
When Musk took the stage, he was greeted with cheers. Thousands of people took out their phones to film it. Musk called on Trump supporters to register to vote, saying: “Gather everyone you know and everyone you don’t know. Drag them to register to vote.”
“If they don’t, these will be the last elections,” he added ominously. “That’s my prediction.”
And Trump supporters in Butler who spoke to WIRED said that while they had planned to attend the rally regardless of Musk’s presence, they were excited to have him in the MAGA group. Some had even come from out of town to attend the event.
“That definitely sweetened the deal,” says Sherry O’Donnell, a Trump supporter who attended Butler’s rally.
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“I got excited because I really like Elon Musk and we love what he’s doing with the space program,” Brian Yanoviak, who drove from eastern Pennsylvania to attend the rally, told WIRED. Yanoviak was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. “He is very intelligent, very innovative. He understands what is happening to the United States. And he truly cares about the future of our country. Very similar to Trump, very similar to Tucker Carlson, very similar to RFK Jr…. It is truly a movement, and it is a movement to make America great again, because if we don’t, we are going to lose our republic ”.
Musk’s appearance at the rally was part of a broader get-out-the-vote effort by the billionaire and owner of X. In recent months, Musk has gone all-in on Trump’s campaign and Republican candidates across the country, spending millions of dollars. Musk has also used his personal X account to get out the vote, posting voter registration links in swing states to his 200 million followers.
Many of the rally attendees WIRED spoke to saw Musk’s ownership of X as a blessing.
Rob Gray, who also attended Butler’s rally, says he posts mostly on Facebook, but he stays up to date with news about X. “They say, ‘Oh, Trump is a threat to democracy.’ What is a greater threat to democracy than the censorship that is so widespread throughout social media? Gray says. “I’m totally grateful that he bought Twitter, turned it into X, and that now people can have the freedom to talk to each other.”