Donald Trump, seeking donors, meets with Elon Musk

Donald Trump, who is urgently seeking new donors to aid his presidential campaign, met Sunday in Palm Beach, Florida, with Elon Musk, one of the world's richest men, and a few wealthy Republican donors, according to three people briefed on the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private discussion.

Trump and his team are working to find additional major donors to shore up his finances as he heads into an expected general election against President Joe Biden. Trump has praised Musk to allies and hopes to have a one-on-one meeting with the billionaire soon, according to a person who has discussed the matter with Trump.

It's not yet clear whether Musk plans to spend any of his fortune on Trump's behalf. But his recent social media posts suggest he thinks it's essential that Biden be defeated in November -- and people who have spoken to Musk privately confirmed that is indeed his view.

With a net worth of around $200 billion, according to Forbes, Musk could decide to throw his weight behind Trump and potentially, almost single-handedly, erase what is expected to be Biden and his allies' huge financial advantage over the former president.

Aides to Trump did not respond to a request for comment. Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

Musk has long portrayed himself as independent-minded, and like many business leaders he has donated to candidates from both parties over the years. Unlike other U.S. billionaires, he has not spent heavily on a presidential election, and his donations have been fairly evenly split over the years between Democrats and Republicans. Musk's businesses, Tesla and SpaceX, have benefited from federal government contracts and subsidies.

A person close to Musk said his relationship with the government had historically made him wary about identifying too closely with one political party over the other. In 2017, the billionaire famously stepped away from two business advisory councils when Trump was president over Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement.

"Climate change is real," Musk posted on Twitter in June 2017. "Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world."

The two have had other moments of friction. A few months before the midterm elections, in the summer of 2022, he and the former president traded insults, with Trump calling him an expletive and Musk saying it was time for the former president to "sail into the sunset."

At the same time, however, Musk was becoming more open about his preference for the Republican Party.

On the eve of the midterms, he told his more than 100 million followers on X -- the social media platform that was called Twitter until Musk bought it in 2022 -- that they should vote for a Republican Congress. He has railed against what he describes as the left's "woke" agenda and has attacked Biden over the record number of migrants who have entered the United States during his presidency.

Musk's comments about immigration have grown increasingly alarmist. He has suggested that the president's immigration policies threaten the existence of the U.S. itself and have pushed U.S. democracy to the brink. He has suggested that Democrats are "ushering in vast numbers of illegals" to cheat in elections. There is no evidence to support his claim of mass voter fraud.

"America will fall if it tries to absorb the world," Musk posted Tuesday on X. Earlier in the day, he posted that the Biden administration's immigration policies amounted to "treason."

The person close to Musk, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that if he does get behind Trump, his views about immigration will have been a significant motivator.

Musk has previously raised questions over Biden's age and once echoed one of Trump's favorite jabs by claiming the president was "still sleeping" after Biden failed to congratulate one of his companies. Musk has also held a grudge against the president after the White House did not invite Tesla to an event on electric vehicles in August 2021.

"Let's not forget the White House giving Tesla the cold shoulder, excluding us from the EV summit," the Tesla CEO posted on X in December.

Musk visited the White House in September to discuss matters around artificial intelligence, according to NBC News, which obtained visitor logs. Biden and Musk did not meet during the visit.

After buying Twitter in October 2022, Musk reinstated Trump's account. The former president had been barred from the platform after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, a decision that Musk had previously suggested was a mistake.

Still, it was far from clear that Musk would support Trump's presidential bid. Musk had indicated before the Republican nominating contest that he was leaning toward backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis kicked off his formal candidacy in a livestreamed audio discussion with Musk on X last May, and there was widespread speculation that a donation from Musk to the super political action committee supporting DeSantis would follow. But it never did.

Even if Musk does not ultimately decide to donate to a pro-Trump super PAC or spend money in other ways to help Trump, his own megaphone is substantial. Musk has 175 million followers on X and has an ability like few others in the U.S. to shape news coverage.