The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman shone a light on billionaire Elon Musk’s reported desire to pump $100 million into what Haberman described as “entities that are controlled by” President Donald Trump’s political team.
It would be “something very different” to the almost-$300 million that special government employee Musk, the world’s richest person, splurged on boosting Trump and GOP causes during the 2024 elections, Haberman told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday.
And Haberman, a political analyst for CNN, suggested Trump would not be happy if Democrats did the same thing.
“It would be a different kind of approach,” Haberman said of Musk’s move, which she and Times’ colleague Theodore Schleifer reported on first.
The backdrop, Haberman explained to Cooper, was the reportedly “very contentious Cabinet meeting” when Trump officials clashed with Musk over what they fear is his unchecked power in his Trump-enabled role of gutting government, Musk’s subsequent presence at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and on Air Force One and then their Tesla-promoting stunt at the White House when Trump essentially acted as a salesperson on behalf of Musk’s electric vehicle company.
Cooper asked, “How might somebody look at this? Is this Elon Musk worrying about his position vis-a-vis Trump after that contentious meeting which you and your colleagues reported on and broke that story? And this is a way to influence that or ensure that?”
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Haberman said it “absolutely helped solidify” Musk’s standing with Trump.
Musk appears to have “some sense of how to work with this president and what exactly he wants,” Haberman continued. “But in terms of the broader question, there’s just never been a situation where you have a part-time employee to the government working inside the White House complex and also making this kind of a donation to a president’s political apparatus.”
“It’s unprecedented,” she added. “It is also the kind of thing that, you know, I suspect that Donald Trump would have gotten very upset about had a Democrat done it.”