Surprise: Elon Musk Says He Isn’t Actually Donating $45 Million a Month to Trump

The day Donald Trump chose J.D. Vance as his running mate, Elon Musk reportedly pledged to donate $45 million a month to a super PAC he co-founded in support of the former president. But in an interview with weirdo right-wing influencer Jordan Peterson on Tuesday, the billionaire seemed to back off that record number, calling the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on his promised contributions “not true.”

“I am not donating $45 million a month to Trump,” Musk told Peterson. He gave to the super PAC he cofounded, he said, in support of “meritocracy” and deregulation—not “hyperpartisan” causes. “I am making some donations to America PAC,” he added later, “but at a much lower level.”

It’s unclear how much Musk is financially backing Trump, whom he continued to express support for in his sit-down with Peterson. “In my view, the Republican Party is actually the meritocracy party,” he said, criticizing Democrats for “promoting DEI”—a bogeyman of the right and an ugly line of attack some in the GOP have used against Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Still, Musk noted that he was not exactly MAGA, but MAG (“Make America Greater”).

Musk’s qualified praise—as well as his scaled-back donation promise—is likely disappointing for the Trump campaign, which appeared to be counting on Musk to help counter the record fundraising Harris has raked in since President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and passed the torch to the vice president. “Elon is a blank check,” as a Republican source close to Trump told my colleague Gabriel Sherman. “He’s invested in this.”

Musk, who endorsed Trump on his X platform after the former president’s near-assassination this month, has become a popular figure on the MAGA right; the mere mention of his name drew cheers of approval from the crowds at last week’s Republican National Convention. His conversation with Peterson—full of ten-dollar words in service of ten-cent ideas about the “woke mind virus” and beyond—underscored why. But will he be a “blank check” for the Trump campaign? “What’s been reported in the media,” Musk told Peterson, “is simply not true.”