Still, Musk has cultivated ties with Republicans, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and encouraged his millions of Twitter followers to vote for a GOP Congress ahead of the 2022 midterms. A self-described independent, Musk has indicated he does not plan to support President Joe Biden for another term, despite voting for the Democrat in 2020.
Musk told Bloomberg News last year he intends to spend a “non-trivial” amount of as much as $25 million in the 2024 presidential race through what he called a “super moderate super-PAC.”
It’s unclear whether Musk, worth $182 billion in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, will support DeSantis directly. He hasn’t donated to a political campaign since November 2020, when he gave the then maximum $2,900 contribution to nine senators, four of whom were Democrats. The last presidential candidate he supported was Hillary Clinton.
Musk praised South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who announced his own bid for the Republican nomination on Monday. Musk tweeted Scott’s first political ad of the campaign, calling it a “great statement.”
Musk has previously hailed DeSantis as the GOP’s best hope to defeat Biden in 2024 and has said Trump, 76, is “too old to be chief executive of anything” and should “sail into the sunset” rather than run again.
