Donald Trump has floated a possible advisory role for tech billionaire Elon Musk if he were to retake the White House next year, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.
The two men, who once had a strained relationship, have had several phone calls a month since March as Trump seeks to court powerful donors and Musk seeks an outlet for his political views, the newspaper said, citing several anonymous sources familiar with their conversations. .
Musk and Trump connected in March at billionaire Nelson Peltz’s estate. Since then, the two have discussed various political issues, including immigration, which Musk has spoken about in recent months.
“America will fall if it tries to absorb the world,” Musk tweeted in March.
Musk has said he will not donate to any of the presidential campaigns in this election, but has reportedly He told Trump he plans to hold meetings to dissuade his rich and powerful allies from supporting Joe Biden in November.
It’s only been a few years since Musk and Trump traded insults. At a rally in 2022, Trump called Musk “another shitty artist.” Meanwhile, Musk tweeted that Trump should “hang up his hat and sail off into the sunset.”
Musk briefly served on Trump’s White House business advisory group early in his presidency, but left his post after Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord in 2017.
Now relations seemed to have softened. When Musk acquired Twitter and renamed it X in 2022, he reinstated Trump’s account. Musk has since asked Trump to be more active on X, according to the Journal, although Trump has largely been loyal to his Truth Social platform.
In March, after meeting with Musk at the Peltz estate, Trump said CNBC: “I’ve been friendly with him over the years. I helped him when he was president. I helped him. I liked him.”
As the owner of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk has benefited from federal government policies and contracts over the past few years, including rocket service contracts and electric vehicle tax credits.
Trump said in March that he and Musk “obviously have opposing views on a minor issue called electric cars,” and Trump opposed increasing production of electric vehicles and supported tariffs against foreign manufacturing of electric vehicles.
Peltz, an investor, has been a key connector between Trump and Musk. Peltz and Musk have told Trump that they are working on a large data-driven project designed to ensure votes are counted fairly, although details about the project remain opaque.