Former president Donald Trump asked Elon Musk last summer whether the billionaire industrialist would be interested in buying Trump\u2019s social network Truth Social, according to two people with knowledge of the conversation.<\/p>\n
The overture to Musk, whose business empire includes SpaceX, Tesla and the social networking site X, did not lead to a deal. But the conversation, which has not been previously reported, shows the two men have communicated more than was known. The two have had other conversations, too, Trump advisers say, about politics and business.<\/p>\n
Among their conversations was a meeting earlier this month in Palm Beach, Fla., where Trump met with Musk and a few high-powered Republican donors, the people said. The subject of that discussion is not clear but, after it was first reported by the New York Times, which noted that the meeting happened while Trump was looking for campaign contributions, the billionaire wrote on X that he is \u201cnot donating money to either candidate for US President.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musk, the world\u2019s second-richest man, has increasingly voiced support for conservative ideology on X, including echoing Trump\u2019s unverified claims that the Biden administration is, as Musk wrote last week, \u201cimporting voters and creating a national security threat from unvetted illegal immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the time of last summer\u2019s discussion, Trump\u2019s media company, which owns Truth Social, was trapped in a long-delayed merger process. Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022.<\/p>\n
When The Washington Post asked Musk about the Truth Social call and his other talks with Trump, Musk responded only that he had \u201cnever been to Mar-a-Lago,\u201d Trump\u2019s estate in Palm Beach.<\/p>\n
Trump Media & Technology Group did not address any of the facts reported in this story when invited to do so by The Post. In an emailed statement, Trump Media spokeswoman Shannon Devine said only, \u201cWe heard Trump and Musk were actually discussing buying the Washington Post but they decided it had no value.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Trump\u2019s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
One of the reasons Trump has not posted on X is that he wants to create and keep financial value for his Truth Social site, which he assiduously tracks, according to people close to him.<\/p>\n
He has relentlessly tried to promote it, telling his advisers that he wants to break news on the platform partially to bring in more users. \u201cIt\u2019s hot,\u201d he says, often polling visitors to Mar-a-Lago about whether they have an account.<\/p>\n
He has tweeted once since leaving the Oval Office \u2014 only his dour mug shot last year from an Atlanta jail, where he was booked on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.<\/p>\n
At the time of the call last summer, Trump Media, which owns Truth Social, faced a dim financial outlook. In April, Trump had said in a financial disclosure filing for his presidential candidacy that his 90 percent stake in the company was worth between $5 million and $25 million and that his income from it had been less than $200.<\/p>\n
Three months later, the company\u2019s proposed merger partner, Digital World Acquisition Corp., announced that it had offered to pay an $18 million settlement if the merger were completed to settle charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had misled investors, further casting doubt over the deal at the time.<\/p>\n
But in the past month, the SEC greenlit Digital World\u2019s merger registration, setting the stage for Trump Media to become a public company potentially worth billions of dollars. That change could offer Trump a financial lifeline as he faces hundreds of millions of dollars in legal penalties. Shareholders are expected to officially approve the merger during a vote later this month, but a lockup provision of the deal would require Trump to wait six months before selling any shares.<\/p>\n
Musk once belittled Truth Social, posting in 2022 that Trump\u2019s site had a \u201cterrible name\u201d and that it was \u201ctime for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump responded on Truth Social by posting a photo of the two men in the Oval Office alongside a caption: When Musk visited \u201cthe White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects \u2026 I could have said \u2018drop to your knees and beg,\u2019 and he would have done it,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Musk, he added, \u201cshould focus on getting himself out of the Twitter mess,\u201d saying the site was \u201cperhaps worthless.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musk, however, publicly condemned Twitter\u2019s banning of Trump\u2019s account after the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. The site, under Musk, reactivated Trump\u2019s account in late 2022.<\/p>\n
Within the past year, as Musk\u2019s promotion of conspiracy theories and criticism of liberal causes as a \u201cwoke mind virus\u201d have driven away users and advertisers, Musk has voiced enthusiasm about Trump\u2019s ability to win attention on social media. In August, he said on X: \u201cPeople are clearly interested in hearing from Trump. One may not agree with the man, but he is never boring!\u201d<\/p>\n
He posted last week that \u201cTrump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a very real disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has continued to insist to advisers and people close to him that Musk should buy Truth Social. If he chose to sell the platform, it could provide him a much needed cash infusion, though the merger process and lockup period could complicate the deal.<\/p>\n
Trump met with Musk after recent judgments against the former president in two civil cases that may cost him well over $500 million.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Trump posted a $91 million bond to stay a judgment against him in a defamation suit brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, which he is appealing. In a fraud case brought by the New York attorney general, Trump will need to pay penalties of more than $450 million or post a bond of the same amount later this month to stay the judgment in that case during appeal.<\/p>\n
Trump has not said where he plans to get the money. Few Wall Street banks have lent him substantial sums since his Trump-branded Atlantic City casinos began failing in the 1990s, and borrowing against his properties may be difficult and expensive to do in short order, experts said. He lists 22 assets \u2014 most of them real estate \u2014 as valued at \u201cover $50 million\u201d each, according to a filing he made with the government in August, and dozens of other less valuable properties. But he has made no public moves to sell his best real estate.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s lawyers have made a number of filings in recent days aimed at buying the former president more time to secure the needed funds or at least to reduce the amount he must provide.<\/p>\n
They argued in court that even the world\u2019s wealthiest people cannot come up with half a billion dollars so quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, has five hundred million laying around,\u201d Trump attorney Christopher Kise argued before an appeals court judge last week. (Bezos, the founder of Amazon, owns The Post.)<\/p>\n
Faiz Siddiqui contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Former president Donald Trump asked Elon Musk last summer whether the billionaire industrialist would be interested in buying Trump\u2019s social network Truth Social, according to two people with knowledge of the conversation. The overture to Musk, whose business empire includes SpaceX, Tesla and the social networking site X, did not lead to a deal. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}