Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk took to the stage to cheer at Donald J. Trump’s rally Saturday night, raising his arms above his head and jumping into the air — his shirt undone. When it was tucked up, it jumped into the air – twice – exposing its navel.
He wore an “Occupy Mars” shirt under a sports coat, a nod to a black “Make America Great Again” baseball cap.
“As you can see, I’m not just a MAGA, I’m a dark MAGA,” he said.
Musk publicly supported Trump on July 13, posting minutes after a gunman attempted to kill the former president in Butler, Pennsylvania. with Xa social media platform he owns. So when Trump returned to hold a rally at the same venue where he was attacked on Saturday, he brought Musk with him.
While jumping up and down on stage, he called out to the audience, “Fight!” fight! fight! “It’s an echo of what Trump said after the attack.
The audience seemed to know Musk, and cheered when the former president introduced him. Trump lavished praise on Musk, the world’s richest man, for founding an American car company and defending “free speech” with X.
“President Trump must win to protect the Constitution. He must win to protect American democracy,” Musk said, raising his hand into the microphone.
At one point, he urged people to vote, darkly claiming: “If I don’t vote, this will be my last election. That’s my prediction.”
Musk frequently posts about Trump on X, but Saturday’s speech was his first at one of the Republican candidate’s rallies. His short speech recalled some of the things he has already said online, including his baseless claim that Democrats want to disenfranchise people. (In fact, Republicans have filed lawsuits in several states seeking to reduce the electorate, primarily by disqualifying voters who are likely to be Democrats.)
“They are trying to take away our freedom of speech,” Musk said at the rally. “They’re trying to take away your right to bear arms. They’re effectively trying to take away your right to vote.”
Musk, who has a net worth of more than $260 billion according to Forbes magazine, is usually a low-key speaker, but he turned up the energy. He repeatedly asked viewers to make sure they registered to vote and urged listeners to be “pests” when it comes to encouraging others to vote.
Musk founded America PAC, a super PAC focused on ground strategy to support the Trump campaign in key battleground states, and has been closely involved in that effort.
Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have criticized each other in the past, but in recent months they have forged closer ties, with Mr. Musk lending his star power and large X platform to the Trump campaign.
In August, he interviewed the president in a live audio conversation on the platform. It was then that Musk, whose company receives billions of dollars in federal contracts and grants, proposed that a future Trump administration could run a “Government Efficiency Commission.” Plans to cut federal spending and bureaucracy are the pillars of Mr. Trump’s economic plan.