Last summer, former President Donald Trump discussed promoting his social networking site Truth Social with Elon Musk, The Washington Post reported Tuesday, just as the company that planned to take the social network public faced an SEC investigation and regulatory pressure.
The proposal ultimately didn’t lead to a deal, the Post reported, citing unnamed sources.
The talks took place before the Securities and Exchange Commission over a proposed merger in February between Trump Media and Trump Media.
Trump reportedly attempted to sell the social network at the time, and 2023 SEC filings revealed that Trump Media
Musk had in the past criticized Truth Social, saying it had a “terrible name” and “only exists because Twitter censored loose speech. “
Although Musk reinstated Trump’s Twitter account in November 2022, shortly after buying Twitter for $44 billion, the former president has only posted once since, to retain the price of Truth Social.
Musk has met with the former president before, adding once last week in a meeting reported by the New York Times, but the billionaire also said he “won’t give cash to any of the U. S. presidential candidates” in a message on X a short time later. noticias. de the Assembly was dissolved.
Musk has not returned a request for comment from Forbes, and only told the Washington Post that he has “never been to Mar-a-Lago,” and Trump’s campaign and media company have also not commented on the report.
The merger between TMTG and Digital World, known as a special targets acquisition company, was first announced in 2021 but was delayed as they sought regulatory approval from the SEC. In July 2023, Digital World agreed to pay an $18 million fine to settle an SEC investigation for violating stock trading rules, with the company alleging that Digital World failed to tell investors that it had begun making plans for a merger with TMTG before going public. Although the merger was scheduled to close before September 2023, the company’s shareholders ultimately extended the deadline and gave the company more time to facilitate the transaction.
Elon Musk, who considers himself a moderate politician, served on Donald Trump’s corporate advisory board. Although Musk has said he remains at his workplace to publicize reasons such as sustainable power and opposing Trump’s immigration policy, the billionaire publicly resigned from his position in 2017 after Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement. One of the biggest differences between Musk and the former president is the electric car factor. Much of Musk’s wealth comes from his ownership of Tesla shares, yet electric cars have become one of Trump’s biggest punching bags in recent years. 2024, calling automakers who produce them “stupid or cowardly. “However, Musk has recently begun to publicize more conservative reasons, basically related to immigration and conspiracy theories about the election.
We estimate Musk’s net income to be around $196. 5 billion, making him the second richest user in the world. Trump is around $2. 6 billion.