Elon Musk told Tucker Carlson he 'voted for Biden.' Turns out, he apparently didn't vote at all.
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- Elon Musk has said multiple times that he "voted for Biden."
- According to Walter Isaacson's new biography on Musk, he didn't actually vote on election day.
- Apparently, Musk believed that his vote wouldn't make a difference because he lived in California.
Elon Musk has seemingly changed his tune about how he voted in the 2020 US presidential election.
Rather, he apparently didn't vote in the general election — telling biographer Walter Isaacson that he didn't make it the polls, contradicting what the Tesla CEO previously said online and in interviews about his voting history and political beliefs.
"I didn't vote for Donald Trump. I actually voted for Biden," Musk told Tucker Carlson in an April interview on Fox News. "Not saying I'm a huge fan of Biden because I would think that would probably be inaccurate, but you know, we have difficult choices to make in the presidential elections," Musk said.
Two months earlier, he posted on X, formerly Twitter, that "I voted for Biden." It's not clear if Musk was referring to the general election — or if he previously cast a vote for Biden in a primary, but Insider reached out to Musk seeking clarification but didn't hear back ahead of publication.
But Isaacson writes in his new book, simply titled "Elon Musk," that while Musk had been planning to vote for Biden on election day, "he decided that going to the polls in California, where he was then registered, was a waste of time because it was not a contested state."
Musk had already developed a "deep disdain" for Trump by this time but wasn't a Biden fan either, according to Isaacson's book — a feeling that seemed to go back a few years.
"When he was vice president, I went to lunch with him in San Francisco where he droned on for an hour and was boring as hell, like one of those dolls where you pull the string and it just says the same mindless phrases over and over," Musk told Isaacson.
Still, Musk said he would have voted for Biden in 2020, but decided against it because he lived in California, an uncontested blue state. Musk's sentiments toward Biden soured in August 2021, according to Isaacson, when Biden hosted an event celebrating electric vehicles. Biden invited the leaders of GM, Ford, Chrysler, and the leader of United Auto Workers, but did not invite Musk.
Musk's relationship with both Biden and Trump has been turbulent in the time since. Ultimately, however, he expressed concern with the US's "ancient leadership," telling Carlson in his Fox interview that he wants someone "normal" to vote for in 2024.
Though Musk said he has a history of voting for Democratic candidates, he said he placed his first Republican vote in the 2022 primaries.
"To independent-minded voters: Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic," Musk wrote on social media ahead of the 2022 primaries.
Musk's politics shifted to the right in recent years
His political swing seems to have been spurred around 2020. Musk was openly resentful of California's stay-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, so much so that he moved Tesla's HQ to Texas. During that same year, he posted a tweet saying "Take the red pill," red-pilled being a common phrase among conservatives. He also clashed with Elizabeth Warren and other progressives on Twitter, which he has since purchased and rebranded to X.
In May 2022, he tweeted saying that the "woke mind virus" would "destroy civilization."
More recently, he helped Gov. Ron DeSantis launch his 2024 campaign for US president on X in a livestream that was delayed due to technical issues and crashes.
Musk's statements of support for Republicans have not gone unnoticed by some on the left. Some Democrats have said they would stop supporting Tesla due to Musk's recent social media posts. One Tesla owner told CNN he was worried that the cars would become "the new MAGA hat."
Isaacson's book also revealed that "Curb Your Enthusiasm" creator Larry David confronted Musk about voting Republican when the two were seated near each other during a wedding reception. David "seemed to be fuming" at Musk, Isaacson wrote.
"Do you want to just murder kids in schools?" David asked the Tesla CEO, who was "baffled and annoyed" at the question, according to Isaacson. The wedding took place only days after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 children dead.
Musk replied that he was "anti-kid murder."
"Then how could you vote Republican?" David said. The comedian later told Isaacson that Musk's negative posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, about the Democratic Party were "sticking in my craw."
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/XZpldhR
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