Elon Musk's Trump rally appearance completes the tech billionaire's MAGA transformation

This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 6 Episode of “Ayman”.

When billionaire Elon Musk bought what was once called Twitter two years ago, he vowed to keep it as an unbiased platform. In fact, it was his Mission statement. Just days after purchasing the platform, Musk said: “For Twitter to earn public trust, it must be politically neutral, which in effect means it antagonizes the far right and the far left alike.”

He repeated this message frequently in interviews after purchasing the platform. “The goal of the new Twitter is to be as fair and impartial as possible. So I don’t advocate any political ideology,” Musk told Fox News. But that quickly turned out to be an empty feeling.

Instead, Musk used his immense influence on his own platform to urge his followers to vote Republican in the 2022 midterm elections. He also expressed support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Republican presidential primary.

But there was one prominent Republican that Musk wasn't a fan of: Donald Trump. Musk previously said the former president was “too old” and that he should “hang up his hat and sail off into the sunset.”

As you can imagine, Trump didn't take this advice particularly well. In 2022, Trump addressed Musk's comments during a rally in Alaska, telling the crowd that Musk had said he voted for Trump in 2016.

Trump escalated the feud when he claimed on his own social media site, Truth Social, that Musk had come to the White House and begged him for help with his projects. “I could have said, 'Get on your knees and beg,' and he would have done it,” Trump wrote in 2022. The former president brutally mocked Musk's notoriously blooper-filled campaign launch for DeSantis on X.

But after the campaigns of Musk's preferred candidates, DeSantis and later Vivek Ramaswamy, went down in flames, the billionaire planned a spring trip to Mar-a-Lago. In March, he met with Trump, who happened to be seeking a cash injection to help his campaign.

Musk was then asked about the meeting and whether he would donate money to Trump or then-presidential candidate Joe Biden. “While I will express my opinion, I don't want to put a thumb on the scale that matters financially,” he told Don Lemon.

But in July, we learned that Musk had already donated a significant amount to a political group working to elect Trump. The day after the report, Musk publicly supported the former president following the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Last month, Musk was asked about the impact of this recommendation and did not respond to requests for comment.

That brings us to Sunday, when Trump was at the podium again in Butler, nearly three months after the failed assassination attempt. Only this time, Trump was accompanied by his friend Musk – the same man who once announced that he would keep his social media platform politically neutral and the same man who once declared that Trump was not the right candidate for the leadership of this country.

“As you can see, I’m not just MAGA. I am Dark MAGA,” Musk told the crowd. He then urged those in attendance to “fight” and that Trump “must win to preserve the Constitution. He must win to preserve democracy in America.”

I'm not sure about “Dark MAGA” – I prefer comedian Mike Drucker's interpretation: “Dork MAGA.” But let's take this moment in. What happened on that stage in Butler on Sunday will be the legacy of Elon Musk. The man once considered a tech visionary, a real-life Tony Stark, will now be known as the man who traded his reputation and self-proclaimed principles to become nothing more than a MAGA hat-wearing reactionary Lex Luthor.

Ayman Mohyeldin

Ayman Mohyeldin is an MSNBC host who has long covered the Middle East and the Arab world. He is the host of “Ayman,” which airs Saturdays and Sundays at 7 p.m. EST.

Andrew Kenlon And Allison Detzel contributed.