When President Donald Trump was first visited by billionaire and close ally Elon Musk in 2020, the two reportedly didn't get along, with Musk disapproving of the White House and Trump himself.
In 2020, just before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which wreaked havoc upon the U.S., Musk visited Trump in the White House during his first presidential term to discuss a plan to build a Tesla gigafactory in Mexico instead of in Texas.
An anonymous witness within the West Wing at the time of Musk's visit overheard his conversations with others present at the time, occasionally including Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and assistant to the President, Tim Pataki.
Musk went as far as to call Trump "a f***ing moron" behind his back, the witness told POLITICO.
"We walk into the Oval, and he kind of looks around, and he's looking around," the witness said. "He's like, 'Gosh, I tell you. I mean, I was just in China and man, their palaces just make the White House kind of look more like an outhouse.'"
National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and four other staffers were silent during Musk's comments while Trump seethed.
Though the two struggled to find common ground, their opinions pertaining to COVID-19 finally matched up.
"They talked a little about Covid, and both of them were equally dismissive of Covid and just how it was basically the flu, and people are freaking out for no reason, and all that stuff," the witness recalled.
Musk, who served on three Trump advisory councils in 2017, decided to leave them all after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords, sharing his reasoning on X (then Twitter).
"Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world," he tweeted.
Years later in 2022, Trump took to Truth Social to berate Musk, sharing an image of the meeting between the two in the White House from earlier.
"When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it's electric cars that don't drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he'd be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, "drop to your knees and beg," and he would have done it..." Trump wrote.
The President also had a reaction to Musk stating that Trump was "too old" to run for president again.
"Elon never told me he only voted for Democrats. In fact, he told me he voted for 'Trump,' and would do so again. Now he's going to pay a big price for signing a bad contract for a bad company," Trump posted on Truth Social.
Musk ultimately became Trump's biggest financial supporter during his campaign leading up to the 2024 election, providing him with $288 million in funding that aided in delivering him the presidency. The SpaceX CEO is now one of the President's closest advisors and confidants.
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