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Elon cozies up to Donald for attention. Trump should wait until the check clears.
By Chris Brennan, USA TODAY,
3 hours ago
Imagine a man, rich and famous but always presenting as emotionally empty, needing more and more, so thirsty for attention that he spouts outrageous stuff because the antipathy it provokes from critics is as valuable to him as the admiration he draws from his fans.
Elon Musk takes the opportunity to grab headlines, again
Elon Musk, X/Tesla - CEO, arrives before the start of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senators Rounds, Heinrich And Young hosting the Inaugural Artificial Intelligence Insight Forum With Key AI Stakeholders To Help Forge Bipartisan Consensus On Legislation To Capitalize On This Transformative Technology. Jack Gruber, Jack Gruber-USA TODAY
The Wall Street Journal broke the news last Monday , during the first day of the Republican National Convention, that Musk was telling people he would commit about $45 million per month to a new super PAC founded and funded in May by other tech oligarchs.
It was exactly the kind of splashy, insert-yourself-into-the-news-cycle sort of spectacle that Musk thrives on. But a word of caution here for Trump: Wait till Musk's check clears before you really celebrate his generosity.
Musk has previously predicted that humans would land on Mars this year and that his spaceship maker, SpaceX, would have been flying people on the regular to the moon by 2018. He also forecast in mid-March 2020 that the COVID-19 pandemic would be over by the end of the following month.
That's all great stuff for grabbing headlines, but that's all it was good for.
Musk has to ignore that Trump hates electric cars
Trump and Musk are not simpatico on all things. For instance, Trump openly loathes electric cars. That has long been a standard attack in his rally stump speech.
Imagine Teddy Roosevelt railing against the combustion engine as president in 1903 and Henry Ford declaring, "I'll throw wads and wads of cash his way!" ( Fun fact : Roosevelt rode in both gas-powered and electric cars as president.)
Still, Musk brags about having Trump's ear. During a Tesla shareholders meeting recently, he said Trump calls him "out of the blue" to chat. "I don't know why, but he does," Musk told shareholders .
Musk has said that he voted for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, when he told CNBC that Trump "doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States."
He also voted for Biden in 2020, but announced in 2022 that he would support Republicans that year because of "unprovoked attacks by leading Democrats against me and a very cold shoulder to Tesla & SpaceX."
Musk's announcement, made on the social media site he renamed X, landed a month and a half before Trump tore into him on the then-president's rival social media platform known as Truth Social.
" When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all his many subsidized projects, whether its electric cars that don't drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocket ships to nowhere, without which subsidies he'd be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, 'drop to your knees and beg,' and he would have done it," Trump posted, along with a picture of Musk standing in the Oval Office, looking like an errant schoolboy called to the principal's office.
That failed to boost the bottom line for the business, of course. But it won Musk plenty of attention. Just like Trump, Musk sees real value in playing the victim if it draws an audience.
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Trump and Musk share an empty attention tank they can't seem to fill
But don't get it twisted that this is about politics or policy for Musk or Trump. They're both long-standing attention grifters who can see and capitalize on the value of being in the center of the American conversation.
Sure, they may need to lean hard on outlandish trash talk and unabashed self-aggrandizement to break through the chaotic chatter, to get people to really dial in. They may even have to lie here and there or everywhere for your consideration.
But know this – it will never be enough for Musk or Trump. They're always on empty, always trying to refuel the tank, to recharge the battery. They won't get there.
It's almost enough to make you feel bad for them. Almost.
Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan
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