Musk wants Trump to quit politics; backs Ron DeSantis as Presidential candidate

Billionaire businessman Elon Musk, who has been slapped with a lawsuit by Twitter for backtracking on buying the platform in a $44 billion deal, seems to be engaged in a verbal war with former president Donald Trump. On Monday (July 11), Tesla CEO advised the former president to ‘hang up his hat and sail into the sunset’.

Musk wanted Trump to stay out of the 2024 Presidential race and was contemplating supporting Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, as the Republican candidate.

In the midst of an ongoing verbal joust between Trump and Musk that has been going on for a while now, Musk said Trump is too old to run for the Oval Office in 2024, as a poll shows the former president is losing support among Republican voters. Musk tweeted, “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”

Ironically, at one time, Trump used to call Musk as “one of our great geniuses”. Musk’s tweet came after Trump blasted Elon Musk at a recent public event in Alaska calling him a “bullshit artist”. The former US president was responding to Musk’s recent claim that he voted for a Republican for the first time last month.

According to Trump, Musk had told him that he had never voted for a Republican. But, Musk had also told him that he had voted for the former president and so Trump said, ‘he’s another bullsh*t artist’.

Also read: Twitter to sue Elon Musk after he pulls out of $44 billion buy-out deal

Musk further tweeted that Democrats – who hold seven of the nine seats on the Congressional committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters –“should also call off the attack”.

“Don’t make it so that Trump’s only way to survive is to regain the presidency,” Musk wrote. Trump will be 78 when the 2024 presidential election is held.

According to Musk, Trump would be 82 at the end of the first term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America. “If DeSantis runs against Biden in 2024, then DeSantis will easily win – he doesn’t even need to campaign,” tweeted Musk. Musk felt that DeSantis is such a quality candidate that Biden would be soundly defeated rather than if Trump were his opponent.

Musk is not alone in not wanting Trump to run for president in the 2024 elections. A recent poll conducted  by the New York Times and Siena College found that nearly half of Republican party primary voters favoured someone other than Trump in the 2024 election. Nearly 16 per cent even indicated that if he was the Grand Old Party’s nominee they would support president Joe Biden, vote for a protest candidate, abstain from voting or be unsure of what to do.

Also read: ‘Model of hypocrisy’: Twitter sues Musk for backing out of $44 bn deal

Musk withdraws from Twitter deal

This verbal joust with Trump came after Musk on Friday (July 8) filed a notice to withdraw his $44bn bid to buy Twitter though the company had agreed in late April to sell it to him. And Musk had vowed to transform the platform’s content moderation policies to be more politically inclusive.

However, amid plummeting tech stocks, Musk is backing out on the grounds that Twitter failed to provide promised information on fake and spam accounts. However, news reports in international newspapers quoted Twitter as saying that Musk backing out was “invalid and wrongful”.

Trump spoke up after Friday’s announcement, saying the Tesla and SpaceX chief’s deal with Twitter was “rotten” anyway.

Earlier, around May, Musk had promised to restore Trump’s access to Twitter. Trump had been banned for his involvement in the Capitol riot after Twitter claimed his continued presence on the platform posed a “risk of further incitement of violence.”

At that time, Musk had disagreed with the Twitter decision to ban the former president. At an event hosted by a financial newspaper, Musk had said that it was not correct to ban Donald Trump stating that it was a mistake. According to Musk, it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.

Though Musk reiterated that he had no ill will for Trump, he felt that he had political baggage and his demeanour was too corrosive to be entertained as a serious possibility for president again.

Dubbing Trump returning as president as “too much drama”, he asked, whether they really wanted a bull in a china shop situation every single day!? “Also, I think the legal maximum age at the start of Presidential term should be 69,” Musk tweeted.