Mick Mulvaney, who served as former President Trump’s acting chief of staff, said in a Thursday interview he recalled billionaire Elon Musk visiting the White House “fairly regularly” while Trump was in office.
“This is a dynamic that goes back several years — Elon Musk was in the White House fairly regularly when I was there,” Mulvaney said in an interview on “The Hill on NewsNation.”
Mulvaney’s remarks come after reports surfaced that Trump and Musk shared a meal together recently, as Trump’s campaign works “to shore up his finances” ahead of a rematch with President Biden.
Asked in a recent interview about the meeting, Musk confirmed to journalist Don Lemon that “I was at a breakfast at a friend’s place, and Donald Trump came by,” adding, “That’s it.”
Mulvaney, in the interview Thursday, cautioned not to read too much into the location of the meeting when asked about the significance of the meeting taking place outside of Mar-a-Lago, the lavish Florida resort where Trump lives and often hosts guests for meetings.
“I wouldn’t read a lot into that. I’d read a little bit of that. That’s a good point, as opposed to, you know, Trump calling him up and saying, ‘Come on down to Mar-a-Lago’ or something like that. I can see that,” Mulvaney said.
He added, however, that he thinks the meeting was likely a byproduct of Trump being “fascinated with media.”
“I’m sure he’s fascinated with Elon Musk’s acquisition of X. He would love to see, be able to do something with Truth Social and X. So this is just Donald Trump being Donald Trump, the business person,” Mulvaney said.
“I don’t read too much into the power dynamic of where they were meeting, and I guess if a former president of the United States was going to go anywhere, it would be to the first- or second-richest persons in the world’s house,” he added.
NewsNation is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which also owns The Hill.