President Donald Trump may be more reliant on Elon Musk and his money than he's willing to admit, according to a Democratic strategist.
The president and his billionaire benefactor publicly split Thursday over Musk's objection to the "big beautiful bill" that Republicans are working to pass, but CNN's Maria Cardona revealed the social media post that likely most aggravated Trump during their bitter online feud.
"I don't think we can ignore that possibility because one of the other tweets that really made Trump's head explode was when Elon Musk said that it was because of Musk that Trump won the election," Cardona said, "and there's a lot of truth in that."
The tech mogul endorsed Trump last July, shortly after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, and he poured nearly $300 million of his own money into his re-election campaign and promoted pro-MAGA content on his X social media platform.
"Those hundreds of millions of dollars that Elon Musk put into the misinformation and the lies and the disinformation in his tweets on his own platform, where he has hundreds of millions of followers," Cardona said. "That did a huge favor to Trump in winning the election."
Musk threatened to fund a third party, which he claimed would represent the interests of "the 80% in the middle," and Cardona said that shouldn't be dismissed as folly.
"I don't think that we can ignore if Musk is really serious about doing that, because, again, that kind of money can move voters," she said. "Now we also saw in Wisconsin, he really invested tens of millions of dollars and it didn't work. So we also understand the strength of voters, which again, I go back to why it's so important for Democrats to take advantage of this situation and this moment in time, where Elon Musk is underscoring the abomination of this bill and say, 'Yes, it is abominable,' and point out to working class and middle class families why."
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