Donald Trump on Thursday said Elon Musk “never told me” he would pledge $45 million a month to support Trump’s presidential bid, days after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO denied a report that he would do so.
“I have a good relationship with him, I think he’s a nice guy,” Trump said of Musk during a call-in interview on Fox News.
“Somebody told me he was going to give me 45 million [dollars] a month. I said, ‘That sounds like a lot, even for Elon, that’s a lot,'” the Republican presidential nominee said.
But Musk “never told me he was giving [$45 million],” he said.
“But he did say ‘I strongly endorse you,’ despite the fact that I’m against the electric car mandate,” Trump said, referring to the Biden administration’s policies aimed at prioritizing EVs over gas-powered vehicles.
Musk’s endorsement came shortly after Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally on July 13.
It also came just over a week before President Joe Biden announced he would withdraw his reelection bid and Vice President Kamala Harris became the de facto Democratic nominee.
Two days after the Trump rally shooting, The Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter, reported that Musk was planning to donate $45 million a month to a newly formed pro-Trump super PAC.
The PAC has already received large donations from other major tech and finance figures such as Joe Lonsdale and the Winklevoss twins.
But Musk, in an interview with conservative public figure Jordan Peterson, said that the figure reported by the Journal was “simply not true.”
“I’m not donating $45 million a month to Trump,” Musk said in that interview, which was posted Monday on X, the social media site he owns.
Musk also said that he created the super PAC, called America PAC, to “promote the principles that make America great in the first place.”
In an X post Tuesday night, Musk wrote, “I am making some donations to America PAC, but at a much lower level.” He asserted that most Republicans align with the PAC’s key values of “supporting a meritocracy & individual freedom.”
Musk doubled down when asked during a visit to Capitol Hill on Wednesday about the reported $45 million monthly pledge.
“At no point did I say that I was donating $45 million a month to Trump,” said Musk, who was invited by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend his speech to Congress. “That was a fiction made up by the Wall Street Journal.”
Musk has declared in March that he would not donate money to “either candidate for US President.” But that statement left open the possibility that he could make indirect contributions through a political action committee, which he has now confirmed he will do.
