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The owner of the social media platform X, from being a skeptic of former President Donald J. Trump, has become one of his most influential supporters.

By Neil Vigdor

Former President Donald J. Trump said Tuesday that he will be interviewed next week through Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of social media platform X and a skeptic who has come up with his candidacy.

In a post on his own social media site, Truth Social, Trump said their verbal exchange would unfold Monday night and that they would follow the main points.

Representatives for the Trump and X campaigns did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Last month, about an hour after Trump was wounded in an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Musk, who is also the chief executive of electric vehicle company Tesla, subsidized his candidacy, breaking with a self-proclaimed neutrality rule. through executives of social media platforms.

During the election campaign, Trump said Musk is a key ally, and while he mocked the diversity and maximum charging of electric vehicles, he also marveled at the technology.

Musk’s ties to the America PAC, a pro-Trump super PAC, have come under scrutiny. The activities of the group, which had planned to spend millions on the campaign, are in disarray.

Trump isn’t the first Republican presidential candidate this election cycle to try to exploit the success of Musk’s social media platform.

In May 2023, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis entered the race for number one, a livestream featuring him and Musk was marred by a series of technical issues. Mr. Trump and his allies took the incident as a sign of Mr. Trump’s condition. Trump’s candidacy. DeSantis, who in the end failed to gain ground. At the time, Donald Trump Jr. wrote a single word on social media: “#DeSaster. “

After the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when the company was still known as Twitter and its former owner, Mr. Trump, whom he had used to succeed tens of millions of followers in his presidency, he has been permanently suspended. The company has restored ownership of Mr. Musk.

Theodore Schleifer contributed reporting.

Neil Vigdor covers politics for The Times, focusing on voting rights issues and election misinformation. Learn more about Neil Vigdor

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