Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said Wednesday that he is not donating to either Joe Biden’s or Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns.
The New York Times reported Tuesday evening that Musk had recently met with Trump, noting that the Trump campaign is looking to raise money to close a funding gap with the Biden campaign. NBC News has not confirmed that meeting. In September, Musk met with Biden administration officials.
Musk has in recent months regularly circulated far-right conspiracy theories related to the Biden administration on X, the social media platform he bought as Twitter in 2022. He also engaged Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to announce his presidential campaign on the platform.
Musk is engaged in at least 11 regulatory or legal fights with the Biden administration and independent federal agencies, and he could stand to see relief in some of them if Trump were to take back the White House, an NBC News investigation found.
Musk, once a popular figure among Democrats for his statements raising alarm about climate change who also said he preferred to avoid politics, has in recent years swung sharply to the right in his public statements. In 2022, he said he previously voted for Democrats but has started to vote Republican.
But Musk and Trump have not always gotten along. Also in 2022, the two exchanged public barbs, with Trump saying Musk made "driverless cars that crash" and "rocketships to nowhere." Musk responded that it was "time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset."
Musk has most warmly embraced Republican and far-right stances on immigration, including ideas that have been compared to the fringe "great replacement" theory, which has been linked to racially motivated shootings.
According to data filed with the Federal Election Commission, Musk has made 19 individual political donations since 2020 in relatively small amounts: $15,013 to Republicans and $11,218 to Democrats.
The person Musk has donated the most to is former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. From 2011 to 2017, Musk gave McCarthy $98,000, the filings show.
Musk's donations are limited by campaign finance laws — individuals can legally donate only $6,600 to a campaign and $5,000 to a leadership political action committee.
