In April 2015, Ivanka shared a post on social media where she revealed that Musk is “one of [her] idols’’, calling him “brilliant” and an “innovator in every sense of the word”.

“If you haven’t listened to his Ted Talks you should do it today!” she added below a snap of the two of them together at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner a year before Donald won the election.

Donald has also proven to be an enduring fan of Musk when, in January 2020, despite their rocky relationship until that point, the then-president told CNBC that the Tesla founder was “one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius”.

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Musk didn’t want Trump to be president

In October 2015, Musk said it would be “embarrassing” if Trump was nominated as the Republican candidate for president and admitted he thought that was the furthest the property mogul would get in the presidential race. Days before the election, he told CNBC that Trump was “not the right guy” for the job because he “doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States”.

In March 2016, Musk denied being a part of a team forming to secretly end Trump’s campaign. “The AEI [American Enterprise Institute] meeting wasn’t secret and I was only there for a few hours to talk about Mars and sustainable energy. Nothing to do with Trump,” he told his Twitter followers.

The same month, he also denied that his company SpaceX had contributed to Trump’s campaign. In fact, in 2015, he donated US$5,000 to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Musk was Trump’s adviser

In December 2016, Musk joined Trump’s advisory councils as a member of the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative and the Strategic and Policy Forum. But he announced he was leaving Trump’s economic advisory council in June 2017, after Trump said he was pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Musk had previously warned he’d quit his role if the US pulled out of the agreement. “Don’t know which way Paris will go, but I’ve done all I can to advise directly to POTUS, through others in WH and via councils, that we remain,” he tweeted.

Musk proved he was true to his word when he announced his resignation in a tweet. “Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world,” he wrote on Twitter.

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They don’t agree on politics

Before quitting, Musk had defended his decision to work with Trump on the advisory councils despite the fact that he disagreed with the president on several controversial issues, including his “Muslim travel ban” and climate change. In February 2017, Musk said it was important to be in the room and have influence in the White House.

“At my request, the agenda for yesterday’s White House meeting went from not mentioning the travel ban to having it be first and foremost,” he tweeted. “I believe this is doing good, so will remain on council and keep at it. Doing otherwise would be wrong.”

Musk made it clear he still didn’t agree with the Trump administration in 2020, when he tweeted “take the red pill” in reference to dialogue from The Matrix movie. Ivanka responded “Taken!” on the platform, but Musk explained in an interview with The New York Times that he wasn’t referring to red as the colour of the Republican Party, but rather according to its meaning from the film.

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“No, it’s just: accept reality as it is as opposed to what you wish it were,” he told the newspaper. “I think [Ivanka] was interpreting it through more of a political lens than it was intended.”

But Musk wants to reinstate Trump on Twitter

A month later, Musk revealed at a Financial Times event: “I do think that it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the country.” He added that the decision to ban Trump in 2021 was “morally wrong and flat-out stupid”.

Trump recently launched his own social media platform called Truth Social.