Elon Musk in an interview released Monday teased a last-minute presidential endorsement, saying he’s “leaning away from Biden” although noting he intends to keep his pledge not to donate to either 2024 candidate.
“I’m leaning away from Biden,” Musk told TV personality Don Lemon in the interview. “I’ve made no secret of that.”
“I may, in the final stretch, endorse a candidate, but I don’t know yet,” Musk added. “I want to make a considered decision before the election, and if I do decide to endorse a candidate then I will explain exactly why.”
During the conversation, Lemon asked the tech titan a series of provocative political and personal questions on subjects such as his use of ketamine, the 2024 election, and SpaceX. Musk supposedly agreed to be interviewed without stipulating which topics could be covered. Following the recording, Musk abruptly pulled the plug on Lemon’s partnership with X, subsequently complaining that his interview “approach was basically just ‘CNN, but on social media,’ which doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that CNN is dying.”
“Instead of it being the real Don Lemon, it was really just Jeff Zucker talking through Don, so lacked authenticity,” Musk wrote on X.
Lemon also prodded Musk on the nature of his recent allegedly impromptu meeting with Trump in Florida, which the Tesla CEO asserted was unplanned. After Lemon repeatedly asked whether Musk would help bankroll Trump’s campaign or legal troubles, Musk assured him that he would not and that Trump never asked for money in that meeting.
“I am not paying his legal bills in any way, shape, or form,” he said.
Elon doubled down on his previous statement that he would not be donating to any 2024 presidential candidate.
“While I’ll voice my opinion, I don’t want to put a thumb on the scale monetarily that is, you know, significant,” he said.
Lemon aired the Musk interview despite the derailed collaboration.
Since acquiring the company, Musk has launched a long-form video venture on X, establishing a show with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. X plans to launch another with former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who is under consideration to be Trump’s vice-presidential pick, in the coming weeks.
“Throughout our conversation, I kept reiterating to him — although it was tense at times — I thought it was good for people to see our exchange,” Lemon said in a video he released on X following Musk’s cancellation of his show. “But, apparently, free-speech absolutism doesn’t apply when it comes to questions about him from people like me.”
Some independent journalists who’ve used X as a platform to share their reporting have criticized Musk for not adhering to free speech principles. Matt Taibbi, who reported on the “Twitter Files,” said Friday he has found Elon Musk has not lived up to his promise to be a “free-speech absolutist.”
“I do believe that Elon proved to be very disappointing on the free speech issue,” Taibbi told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo. “All of us who worked on the Twitter Files felt the same way. We went in feeling tremendously optimistic that he actually meant a lot of the things that he said about being in favor of all legal speech and being a free-speech absolutist and all these other things.”