Tech billionaire Elon Musk has reiterated his support for Republican candidate Donald Trump, saying the former US president must win if the American people want to “preserve freedom and meritocracy”.
“I've never been materially active in politics before, but this time I think civilization as we know it is at stake. If we want to preserve freedom and a meritocracy in America, Trump has to win,” he wrote in a post on X.
Musk was responding to a post praising him as “one of the best in the world at synthesizing complex information.” The post was in response to an X user who accused Musk of spreading misinformation and joining the “MAGA cult,” a reference to Trump's campaign slogan Make America Great Again.
Tesla's CEO publicly supported Trump for the first time after he was shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
“I fully support President Trump and hope for his speedy recovery. The last time America had such a strong candidate was Theodore Roosevelt,” he wrote on X while sharing a video of Trump raising his fist in the air after a bullet hit his ear during an assassination attempt.
Since then, Musk has not shied away from throwing his weight behind the former president’s re-election campaign, from seeking a job in Trump’s cabinet to conducting an exclusive interview with the Republican candidate on X, years after the platform banned him for “inciting violence” following the Jan. 6 violence.
Musk has also lashed out at Trump rival and US Vice President Kamala Harris. On Wednesday, he shared an AI-generated image of Harris and said she “vows to be a communist dictator on day one”.
This came after Harris attacked Trump for “promising to be a dictator from day one” if he were re-elected as US president.
In the past, Musk supported Joe Biden in the 2020 US presidential election. He said he worked closely with the Obama administration and voted for Hillary Clinton against Trump in 2016.
