Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying the former US president must win if the American people want to "preserve freedom and meritocracy".
“I have never been materially active in politics before, but this time I think civilization as we know it is on the line. If we want to preserve freedom and a meritocracy in America, then Trump must win,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X, responding to a post that praised him.
The latter X post said that Musk was “one of the best in the world at synthesizing complex information and seeing a path forwards”.
This post was addressed to a user on X, who accused Musk of spreading misinformation aligning with the “MAGA cult", referring to Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, 'Make America Great Again'.
The Tesla CEO had first openly endorsed Trump after he was shot at during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania earlier this year.
"I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery," he wrote on X, and shared a video of Trump raising his fist in the air after the assassination attempt.
Since then, Musk has continued to show his support for the former president, and his re-election campaign: from expressing a desire to work in his cabinet to hosting an exclusive interview with the Republican candidate on X. After the January 6 Capitol attack, Trump was banned from X for “incitement of violence”, but has returned under Musk's leadership of the platform.
Musk has also taken aim at Trump’s Democrat rival, US Vice-President Kamala Harris. Among other posts targeting her, he shared an AI-generated image of Harris that portrayed her as a communist dictator.
In 2020, Musk voted for incumbent US President Joe Biden.
A May report in The New York Times sought to weigh in on the significance of Musk's open backing for Trump. "Mr Musk’s posts about this year’s presidential race stand out because he is signaling a willingness to tip the political scales as the owner of an influential social media platform, something that no other leader of a social media firm has done," it said. "And Mr Musk exerts outsize influence over the political discourse on X, where he regularly posts to his 184 million followers."