Transcript of What's behind the alliance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk? Reporter weighs in

Some breaking news. President Biden sending a letter to Congressional leaders, warning them that at least one critical disaster relief program is set to run out of money before they return from recess. In the letter obtained by CNN's Kyla Taushi, President Biden says the Small Business Administration's disaster loan program is nearly used up. Officials tell CNN the program needs $1.6 billion to meet the demand of the 3,000 applications that SBA is getting from homeowners and business owners affected by Hurricane Helene. Biden says that both FEMA and the Pentagon are fully funded for now, but that a comprehensive A disaster relief package will be needed as soon as Congress returns November 12th. We're now in the presidential race, the former President's rally in Butler, Pennsylvania tomorrow. Notable for two reasons. It's obviously a return to the site of the first assassination attempt against him back in July. And one of his major Superpack donors, Elon Musk, will be there. Now, things have definitely changed from just over two years ago when Trump called him a BS artist, a rally, and Musk responded online saying, in part, I don't hate the man, but it's time for Trump to hang up his hat and sail into the sunset.

The next day, Trump responded online, as he's want to do, criticizing Musk, quote, electric cars that don't drive long enough, driverless cars that crash or rocket ships to nowhere. He also said that when Musk visited him in the White House, quote, I could have said, drop to your knees and beg, and he would have done it. I'm joined now by the New York Times' Ryan Mack, author of Character Limit: How Elon Musk Distroyed Twitter, and Philip Bump, National Columnist for the Washington Post. Philip, what do you make of this alliance between Trump and Musk?

Yeah, it's striking. I think it's pretty obvious from from Trump's side, if you like Trump, he likes you. That's always been the calculus for him. From Musk's side, Musk obviously finds Trump's authoritarian leanings appealing. He certainly gree with him on immigration. He's taken to very constantly just putting out fake information about immigration that comports with what Donald Trump has been saying on the campaign trail. But it also is obviously the case that Elon Musk responds to Donald Trump's strongman tendencies. In this Butler site, this quasi-religious site for being the place that made Donald Trump the target that he always presented himself as. It makes perfect sense. At that moment, Musk signed on to Donald Trump's campaign. He's going to be there with him. I think it reflects the importance of this site in the Trump mythology.

Ryan, you've written at length about the Trump-Musk Alliance. I know you say tomorrow's rally is a full circle moment. What do you mean by that?

Well, in the moments after the assassination attempt, that's when Elon Musk, who had been already thinking about endorsing Trump, that's when he tweeted out, I'm fully going to back President Trump in this election. This is the moment that I'm choosing. And he went full bore into it. He started tweeting photos, that iconic photo of President Trump holding up his fist, bloodied from the a year, and he bought into those emotions. Now he's going back to Butler. He's closing that loop. He is going to lend his support.

What do you think Musk gets out of it?

There's There's plenty, and there's plenty of potential conflicts of interest. We're talking about a guy who runs multiple companies that are under investigation by government regulators. I think of something like Nitzar, which is investigating Tesla for its self-driving, or the FAA, which is investigating SpaceX. And so you have a marriage or an alliance here that could end up being very beneficial to him when it comes to those investigations.

Phil, But do you think it's also ideological?

Yeah. I mean, it's hard to see that it wouldn't be. Musk is just so ferociously pro-Trump online, right? I mean, obviously, he bought Twitter, turned it into X, and made it into this echo chamber that now is extremely useful to the right broadly, and Trump, specifically. But the fact that he just puts out this propaganda and these false claims that align so completely with Donald Trump, and that he signs on to this picture of Trump as this strong leader who's going to save America, which is exactly how Trump likes to present himself, I think indicates that Musk has bought into it and that Brian, of course, is absolutely right, that there's benefits to Musk from having Donald Trump be president, including that Trump has said he'll give Musk some job in the government or some advisory role. But even beyond that, it's clear that his politics a lot.

Ryan, it seems like Elon Musk, for somebody who is running so many companies, and I imagine under tremendous amounts of pressure, he seems to have a lot of time to just be putting out false information and retweeting stuff or posting stuff that's just not true.

He does have a lot of time. I was just on Twitter or on X looking at his feed, and sometimes he's tweeting more than 75 times a day. I don't understand how you get anything done. I mean, we're all journalists. We think we spend a lot of time on that platform. We have spent a lot of time on that platform. But to do that much on there and run two other companies or multiple other companies is a lot. Now we're talking about him potentially joining the Trump administration. He's talked about this government efficiency commission where he's going to have oversight over spending and jobs. I don't understand how he does it.

Ryan Mack, Philip Bump. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.