Latest news with #Trump2024
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump joined TikTok a year ago as a candidate. Now he has a hand in the platform's future
President Donald Trump joined TikTok as a Republican presidential candidate a year ago, quickly gaining millions of followers, even though he tried to ban it in his first presidency. His debut video was taken alongside UFC president Dana White at a fight in Newark, New Jersey. "The President, is now on TikTok," White said. "It's my honor," Trump responded. The app is facing an upcoming deadline for a ban after President Joe Biden signed a law forcing the Chinese parent company ByteDance to spinoff the app. Trump had unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok through executive action in 2020. But now he's trying to save it by facilitating a buyout deal. "I'd like to see it done," Trump previously said about the divestment, adding that he has a "little sweet spot" in his heart for TikTok, which he claims helped him win votes during the 2024 presidential election. "It'll be protected. It'll be very strongly protected. But if it needs an extension, I would be willing to give it an extension." More: No, Trump did not approve $1,200 for stay-at-home moms, despite viral TikTok videos If ByteDance does not divest TikTok by June 19, it could be banned in the U.S. again. However, Trump has stated that if a sale is not finalized in time, he will extend the deadline. Under federal legislation that put the ban in place, the president can implement a 90-day extension on the deadline to sell. But Trump didn't take this route in January or April, instead, he signed executive orders delaying the ban by 75 days. If Trump wishes to sign another executive order ahead of the June 19 deadline, he can. Ahead of the April 5 deadline, several buyers expressed interest in striking a deal to buy the app. A White House official previously told USA TODAY that a deal to spin off the platform to be operated in the U.S. had been reached, but it was derailed when tariffs were imposed on Chinese imports. China and the U.S. were in an escalating trade war until May 11, when they both walked back the steep tariffs for 90 days while they ironed out a trade deal. But the talks could be stalled as Trump accused China of violating the agreement in a May 30 Truth Social post. The White House did not comment on the latest update about the deal. Who put their hat in to buy TikTok? Amazon, Blackstone, OnlyFans founder among the bidders In January, TikTok went dark for a little more than 12 hours in the U.S. after the app was effectively banned under federal legislation. U.S. internet hosting services made TikTok unavailable to access, and app stores removed the app for download. This federal legislation was signed by Biden in 2024. The legislation gave ByteDance until Jan. 19, 2025 to divest TikTok or face a ban. Some politicians see TikTok as a national security threat, expressing concern that ByteDance may be sharing U.S. user data with the Chinese government. ByteDance has denied these claims, which remain unsubstantiated. During the short-lived January shutdown, Trump promised internet hosting services and app stores that they could restore TikTok and not face legal penalties. Under the federal legislation, companies could be fined $5,000 per user they help access TikTok. For companies like Google and Apple, this could mean a $5,000 fine for each user who downloads or updates TikTok. Internet hosting services like Oracle didn't waste time rebooting the app, but it wasn't until Feb. 13 that TikTok became available again in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Trump cited national security concerns when he signed an executive order in 2020 ordering ByteDance to sell or spin off its U.S. assets within 90 days. The executive order was challenged in court and never came to fruition, but Congress has overwhelmingly passed a law under the Biden administration that forced ByteDance to sell its U.S. operations within a year or else face a nationwide ban. Despite Trump's own efforts to ban the app, he has criticized Biden for doing the same, posting on Truth Social, "just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok." Trump's most-viewed TikToks are his first few, including a staged face-off with Logan Paul and a tribute to the man who died at Trump's first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump has not posted any TikToks since Election Day. Here are some of his other most popular videos on his TikToks: Contributing: Sarah Wire, Zac Anderson, Francesca Chambers, Sudiksha Kochi, Riley Beggin and Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at kcrowley@ Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @ This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: TikTok Trump ban? He joined a year ago and now wants to save it
CNN
a day ago
- Business
- CNN
Why working-class people of color may determine MAGA's political future
The cornerstone of the modern Republican coalition continued to shrink as a share of the electorate in 2024, raising the stakes for whether the GOP can hold President Donald Trump's landmark gains among minority voters. Even with Trump having inspired robust turnout among white adults without a college education, two new analyses found those solidly Republican-leaning voters continued their long-term decline as a proportion of all voters in 2024. Trump offset that decline mostly by winning a bigger share of non-White voters, especially men and those without a four-year college degree, than he did in his first two presidential races. But polls now consistently show Trump's approval rating among those minority voters dropping below his 2024 vote share among them, and his standing for managing the economy falling even further. Republicans once viewed Trump's improving performance with minority voters as a luxury for a party powered primarily by its overwhelming margins among blue-collar White people. But as that bloc continues its seemingly irrevocable decline, rebuilding Trump's support among non-White voters for the 2026 midterms and beyond is becoming a GOP necessity. 'Trump was able to get out a lot of White voters who had not participated in the process, but it's still not enough,' said Alfonso Aguilar, director of Hispanic engagement for the conservative American Principles Project. 'You still need that broad coalition.' The receding of blue-collar White people in the electorate is one of the most enduring trends in American politics. White people without a college degree made up about two-thirds of all voters around the time of Ronald Reagan's two presidential victories in the early 1980s, according to an analysis of census data by William Frey, a demographer at the center-left Brookings Metro think tank. They dipped below 50% of voters for the first time in the 2008 presidential election. Over the three elections with Trump on the ballot, Frey's calculations show, White people without a college degree have fallen as a share of the electorate by about the same amount each time — just over 2 percentage points. They edged below 40% of all voters for the first time in 2020, according to census data, and slipped again to just over 37% of the vote in 2024. Other major data sources on the electorate believe blue-collar White people represented a slightly larger share of the vote than the census found. Catalist and the AP VoteCast, for instance, both estimated that White people without a college degree cast 42% of all votes in 2024. But those sources generally show the same downward trend. Catalist has calculated that blue-collar White people declined 2 percentage points as a share of voters in every election since 2012, almost exactly the same rate of decline Frey and others have tracked in the census data. This erosion is especially striking because it has come despite Trump's undeniable success at inspiring more working-class White voters to come out on Election Day. Turnout among eligible White voters without a college education spiked from 57% in 2012 to over 64% in 2020 before dipping back below 63% in 2024, according to Frey's analysis. That was a much greater increase in participation than for Latinos or college-educated White voters over the same period. Black voter turnout in the Trump years — though robust in 2020 —has fallen considerably from its peaks in the Barack Obama era. Yet despite growing turnout, White voters without a college degree are still shrinking as a share of all voters. The explanation for that seemingly incongruous trend is that turnout is only one of the two factors that shape how large a share of actual voters each group makes up. The other factor is the number of potential voters in each group. For White people without a college degree, rising turnout isn't enough to overcome the decline in their share of the eligible voter pool as American society grows better educated and more racially diverse. 'A lot of people say demography isn't destiny, but in this case, it is,' Frey said. No amount of political mobilization by the GOP, Frey said, has been able to offset the fact that blue-collar White people 'are a smaller part of the population.' And that trend is likely to continue. From election to election, the political impact of this erosion can be almost imperceptible. The steady decline of blue-collar White people as a share of the electorate didn't prevent Trump from increasing his overall share of the vote in each of his three national campaigns. But the imprint of this change deepens over time. Trump, in his three runs for the White House, has won about two-thirds of White voters without a college degree — roughly the share that Reagan captured in his 1984 landslide, according to the exit polls. But while that support was sufficient to net Reagan nearly three-fifths of the total votes cast that year, Trump hasn't reached a majority of the popular vote in any of his three races. Trump did cross 49% and win the popular vote for the first time in 2024, but that required him to achieve a breakthrough with voters of color. Nothing may influence the GOP's prospects in 2028 and beyond more than whether the party can hold those gains — which already look more tenuous than they did last November. As White people without a four-year college degree have waned as a share of the electorate over the past generation, two other groups have surged. White people with at least a four-year college degree have grown from less than one-fifth of all voters during Bill Clinton's first victory in 1992 to just over one-third in 2024, a record high, Frey found. But minority voters have registered the biggest long-term increase. In Clinton's first victory, they cast about 15% of all votes, according to Frey's analysis of the census data; they reached nearly double that share in 2024, at just over 29%. Broadly speaking, these two growing groups have moved in opposite directions during the Trump era. Since Trump became the face of the national Republican party, Democrats have posted their best results among college-educated White voters since the development of modern opinion polling after World War II. Trump's relentlessly belligerent new term, with its focus on the cultural grievances of blue-collar White people, could leave him especially vulnerable to further defection among these voters. They may be most likely to recoil from many of his pugnacious second term priorities — like attacking elite educational institutions, slashing funding for scientific research, and raising prices on everyday goods through tariffs to restore manufacturing jobs they consider irrelevant to their lives. By contrast, Trump has made steady gains among minority voters since his first election. The exit polls, AP VoteCast and Catalist all found that Trump in 2024 posted big gains among Latinos, and solid improvement with Black and Asian American voters. Across all these groups, Trump ran especially well among men, younger voters and people without a four-year college degree. Despite his aggressive rhetoric on race-inflected issues like immigration, crime and diversity, 'the sense of Trump as an existential threat to Black and Latino communities just wasn't there in 2024,' said Manuel Pastor, director of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. Matt Morrison, executive director of Working America, a group that politically organizes working-class voters who are not in unions, said those results showed the mounting consequences of Democrats' failure to deliver an economic message that blue-collar workers find persuasive. 'The same problems that I think Democrats had with White non-college voters, in terms of not having a sufficiently clear product on offer for them, are now showing up in these other communities,' he said. Polls show that these groups continue to express relatively little confidence in Democrats. But Trump's standing with them also looks much weaker today. Multiple national polls around his 100th day in office put his approval rating among non-White voters without a college education at just 27%-29%, which is lower than the roughly one-third of the vote he attracted from them in 2024. Those blue-collar voters of color, many of whom are economically squeezed, express overwhelming opposition in surveys to Trump's tariff agenda. Aguilar believes Trump has demonstrated that the audience for conservative messaging on cultural issues such as transgender rights and a tougher approach to border security was greater than Democrats believed, particularly among Hispanic voters. But he said it would be a mistake for Republicans to assume that Trump's record 2024 performance among Hispanic voters represents a reliable new floor for the party. Instead, he maintains, Trump's capacity to defend those gains will depend on whether he can ease the cost-of-living squeeze on Hispanic Americans more effectively than President Joe Biden did and whether he can assuage growing concerns about his deportation agenda targeting people who are not criminals. While Hispanic voters 'before were moving to the Democratic Party, they are now swing voters,' Aguilar said. 'What matters with Trump is results.' Most Democrats believe that blue-collar non-White voters remain more open to them than working-class White voters. Morrison noted that even when his door-to-door canvassers can deliver an effective economic message to blue-collar White people, they often still collide against a visceral affinity for Trump's polarizing racial and cultural messages. That second line of defense for Trump, he says, is rarely present to the same degree among working-class minority voters. 'They are clearly not as anchored to that (cultural) appeal,' Morrison says. Yet Morrison agreed the persistence of Trump's gains signals that 'it continues to be a struggle' for Democrats to win the votes of working-class minorities. Dan Kanninen, the battleground states director for the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaigns in 2024, likewise said that even if Democrats recover some ground with those voters in 2026 because of dissatisfaction over the economy, they could struggle again 2028 if they don't rebuild their own economic credibility. 'That's still dangerous for Democrats,' Kanninen said. 'The non-White, non-college voters, they may not like Trump, but they don't feel Democrats have shown up for them.' These tectonic changes in the electorate's composition interact in different ways to shape the environment in each campaign. Democrats formerly faced a structural disadvantage in midterm elections because they relied so heavily on younger and non-White voters whose turnout plummeted outside the presidential year; now both parties believe midterms favor Democrats because of their strength among college-educated adults, who are the most reliable voters in off-year elections. Conversely, the electorate's new alignment presents greater challenges for Democrats in presidential elections, when turnout rises among casual voters, particularly those who are younger or non-White or who lack college degrees. All of the major data sources agree that during presidential years, voters without a college degree significantly outnumber those with at least a four-year degree — a point stressed by those who believe Republicans have now opened a durable edge over Democrats in the battle for the White House. Yet even on that front the balance is shifting. From 2000 to 2023, the number of adult US citizens without a four-year college degree grew by only about 3.5 million, Pastor has calculated from Census data. Over the same period, the number of adult citizens with a four-year college degree increased by more than 32 million. In 2000, about 1 in 8 Black and 1 in 10 Latino adult citizens held at least a four-year college degree. Now, in both groups, the share of college-educated adult citizens has roughly doubled to more than 1 in 5, Pastor found. In Catalist's data, people with at least a four-year college degree cast 41% of the vote in 2024, up from 32% in 2008. The Electoral College and the Senate still magnify the influence of working-class White voters beyond their overall presence in society because they are so heavily represented in smaller states and many key battlegrounds (particularly the former 'blue wall' states of the industrial Midwest). But from almost every other direction, the math is increasing the pressure on the GOP to preserve Trump's beachhead among working-class minority voters. White people without a four-year college degree are shrinking in the voter pool, probably irreversibly. Both White and non-White people with a college degree are growing as a share of the electorate, and both groups seem likely to continue tilting against the GOP in the near term, possibly by wider margins than in 2024. The full implications of these changes were obscured in 2024 because the widespread dissatisfaction with Biden's record allowed Trump to run competitively with all those groups. But over the long term, the GOP's best path out of this demographic squeeze is to hold, and even expand, Trump's gains with working-class Asian, Black and, above all, Latino voters. Despite his sagging second-term poll numbers with those groups, Trump might yet succeed in doing exactly that. But the irony of the situation is inescapable. Hardly anyone might have predicted that solidifying minority voters' support would be crucial to the president's political legacy, nearly a decade after he first descended the escalator in Trump Tower to give a campaign announcement speech in which he depicted Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers.
CNN
a day ago
- Business
- CNN
Why working-class people of color may determine MAGA's political future
The cornerstone of the modern Republican coalition continued to shrink as a share of the electorate in 2024, raising the stakes for whether the GOP can hold President Donald Trump's landmark gains among minority voters. Even with Trump having inspired robust turnout among white adults without a college education, two new analyses found those solidly Republican-leaning voters continued their long-term decline as a proportion of all voters in 2024. Trump offset that decline mostly by winning a bigger share of non-White voters, especially men and those without a four-year college degree, than he did in his first two presidential races. But polls now consistently show Trump's approval rating among those minority voters dropping below his 2024 vote share among them, and his standing for managing the economy falling even further. Republicans once viewed Trump's improving performance with minority voters as a luxury for a party powered primarily by its overwhelming margins among blue-collar White people. But as that bloc continues its seemingly irrevocable decline, rebuilding Trump's support among non-White voters for the 2026 midterms and beyond is becoming a GOP necessity. 'Trump was able to get out a lot of White voters who had not participated in the process, but it's still not enough,' said Alfonso Aguilar, director of Hispanic engagement for the conservative American Principles Project. 'You still need that broad coalition.' The receding of blue-collar White people in the electorate is one of the most enduring trends in American politics. White people without a college degree made up about two-thirds of all voters around the time of Ronald Reagan's two presidential victories in the early 1980s, according to an analysis of census data by William Frey, a demographer at the center-left Brookings Metro think tank. They dipped below 50% of voters for the first time in the 2008 presidential election. Over the three elections with Trump on the ballot, Frey's calculations show, White people without a college degree have fallen as a share of the electorate by about the same amount each time — just over 2 percentage points. They edged below 40% of all voters for the first time in 2020, according to census data, and slipped again to just over 37% of the vote in 2024. Other major data sources on the electorate believe blue-collar White people represented a slightly larger share of the vote than the census found. Catalist and the AP VoteCast, for instance, both estimated that White people without a college degree cast 42% of all votes in 2024. But those sources generally show the same downward trend. Catalist has calculated that blue-collar White people declined 2 percentage points as a share of voters in every election since 2012, almost exactly the same rate of decline Frey and others have tracked in the census data. This erosion is especially striking because it has come despite Trump's undeniable success at inspiring more working-class White voters to come out on Election Day. Turnout among eligible White voters without a college education spiked from 57% in 2012 to over 64% in 2020 before dipping back below 63% in 2024, according to Frey's analysis. That was a much greater increase in participation than for Latinos or college-educated White voters over the same period. Black voter turnout in the Trump years — though robust in 2020 —has fallen considerably from its peaks in the Barack Obama era. Yet despite growing turnout, White voters without a college degree are still shrinking as a share of all voters. The explanation for that seemingly incongruous trend is that turnout is only one of the two factors that shape how large a share of actual voters each group makes up. The other factor is the number of potential voters in each group. For White people without a college degree, rising turnout isn't enough to overcome the decline in their share of the eligible voter pool as American society grows better educated and more racially diverse. 'A lot of people say demography isn't destiny, but in this case, it is,' Frey said. No amount of political mobilization by the GOP, Frey said, has been able to offset the fact that blue-collar White people 'are a smaller part of the population.' And that trend is likely to continue. From election to election, the political impact of this erosion can be almost imperceptible. The steady decline of blue-collar White people as a share of the electorate didn't prevent Trump from increasing his overall share of the vote in each of his three national campaigns. But the imprint of this change deepens over time. Trump, in his three runs for the White House, has won about two-thirds of White voters without a college degree — roughly the share that Reagan captured in his 1984 landslide, according to the exit polls. But while that support was sufficient to net Reagan nearly three-fifths of the total votes cast that year, Trump hasn't reached a majority of the popular vote in any of his three races. Trump did cross 49% and win the popular vote for the first time in 2024, but that required him to achieve a breakthrough with voters of color. Nothing may influence the GOP's prospects in 2028 and beyond more than whether the party can hold those gains — which already look more tenuous than they did last November. As White people without a four-year college degree have waned as a share of the electorate over the past generation, two other groups have surged. White people with at least a four-year college degree have grown from less than one-fifth of all voters during Bill Clinton's first victory in 1992 to just over one-third in 2024, a record high, Frey found. But minority voters have registered the biggest long-term increase. In Clinton's first victory, they cast about 15% of all votes, according to Frey's analysis of the census data; they reached nearly double that share in 2024, at just over 29%. Broadly speaking, these two growing groups have moved in opposite directions during the Trump era. Since Trump became the face of the national Republican party, Democrats have posted their best results among college-educated White voters since the development of modern opinion polling after World War II. Trump's relentlessly belligerent new term, with its focus on the cultural grievances of blue-collar White people, could leave him especially vulnerable to further defection among these voters. They may be most likely to recoil from many of his pugnacious second term priorities — like attacking elite educational institutions, slashing funding for scientific research, and raising prices on everyday goods through tariffs to restore manufacturing jobs they consider irrelevant to their lives. By contrast, Trump has made steady gains among minority voters since his first election. The exit polls, AP VoteCast and Catalist all found that Trump in 2024 posted big gains among Latinos, and solid improvement with Black and Asian American voters. Across all these groups, Trump ran especially well among men, younger voters and people without a four-year college degree. Despite his aggressive rhetoric on race-inflected issues like immigration, crime and diversity, 'the sense of Trump as an existential threat to Black and Latino communities just wasn't there in 2024,' said Manuel Pastor, director of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. Matt Morrison, executive director of Working America, a group that politically organizes working-class voters who are not in unions, said those results showed the mounting consequences of Democrats' failure to deliver an economic message that blue-collar workers find persuasive. 'The same problems that I think Democrats had with White non-college voters, in terms of not having a sufficiently clear product on offer for them, are now showing up in these other communities,' he said. Polls show that these groups continue to express relatively little confidence in Democrats. But Trump's standing with them also looks much weaker today. Multiple national polls around his 100th day in office put his approval rating among non-White voters without a college education at just 27%-29%, which is lower than the roughly one-third of the vote he attracted from them in 2024. Those blue-collar voters of color, many of whom are economically squeezed, express overwhelming opposition in surveys to Trump's tariff agenda. Aguilar believes Trump has demonstrated that the audience for conservative messaging on cultural issues such as transgender rights and a tougher approach to border security was greater than Democrats believed, particularly among Hispanic voters. But he said it would be a mistake for Republicans to assume that Trump's record 2024 performance among Hispanic voters represents a reliable new floor for the party. Instead, he maintains, Trump's capacity to defend those gains will depend on whether he can ease the cost-of-living squeeze on Hispanic Americans more effectively than President Joe Biden did and whether he can assuage growing concerns about his deportation agenda targeting people who are not criminals. While Hispanic voters 'before were moving to the Democratic Party, they are now swing voters,' Aguilar said. 'What matters with Trump is results.' Most Democrats believe that blue-collar non-White voters remain more open to them than working-class White voters. Morrison noted that even when his door-to-door canvassers can deliver an effective economic message to blue-collar White people, they often still collide against a visceral affinity for Trump's polarizing racial and cultural messages. That second line of defense for Trump, he says, is rarely present to the same degree among working-class minority voters. 'They are clearly not as anchored to that (cultural) appeal,' Morrison says. Yet Morrison agreed the persistence of Trump's gains signals that 'it continues to be a struggle' for Democrats to win the votes of working-class minorities. Dan Kanninen, the battleground states director for the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaigns in 2024, likewise said that even if Democrats recover some ground with those voters in 2026 because of dissatisfaction over the economy, they could struggle again 2028 if they don't rebuild their own economic credibility. 'That's still dangerous for Democrats,' Kanninen said. 'The non-White, non-college voters, they may not like Trump, but they don't feel Democrats have shown up for them.' These tectonic changes in the electorate's composition interact in different ways to shape the environment in each campaign. Democrats formerly faced a structural disadvantage in midterm elections because they relied so heavily on younger and non-White voters whose turnout plummeted outside the presidential year; now both parties believe midterms favor Democrats because of their strength among college-educated adults, who are the most reliable voters in off-year elections. Conversely, the electorate's new alignment presents greater challenges for Democrats in presidential elections, when turnout rises among casual voters, particularly those who are younger or non-White or who lack college degrees. All of the major data sources agree that during presidential years, voters without a college degree significantly outnumber those with at least a four-year degree — a point stressed by those who believe Republicans have now opened a durable edge over Democrats in the battle for the White House. Yet even on that front the balance is shifting. From 2000 to 2023, the number of adult US citizens without a four-year college degree grew by only about 3.5 million, Pastor has calculated from Census data. Over the same period, the number of adult citizens with a four-year college degree increased by more than 32 million. In 2000, about 1 in 8 Black and 1 in 10 Latino adult citizens held at least a four-year college degree. Now, in both groups, the share of college-educated adult citizens has roughly doubled to more than 1 in 5, Pastor found. In Catalist's data, people with at least a four-year college degree cast 41% of the vote in 2024, up from 32% in 2008. The Electoral College and the Senate still magnify the influence of working-class White voters beyond their overall presence in society because they are so heavily represented in smaller states and many key battlegrounds (particularly the former 'blue wall' states of the industrial Midwest). But from almost every other direction, the math is increasing the pressure on the GOP to preserve Trump's beachhead among working-class minority voters. White people without a four-year college degree are shrinking in the voter pool, probably irreversibly. Both White and non-White people with a college degree are growing as a share of the electorate, and both groups seem likely to continue tilting against the GOP in the near term, possibly by wider margins than in 2024. The full implications of these changes were obscured in 2024 because the widespread dissatisfaction with Biden's record allowed Trump to run competitively with all those groups. But over the long term, the GOP's best path out of this demographic squeeze is to hold, and even expand, Trump's gains with working-class Asian, Black and, above all, Latino voters. Despite his sagging second-term poll numbers with those groups, Trump might yet succeed in doing exactly that. But the irony of the situation is inescapable. Hardly anyone might have predicted that solidifying minority voters' support would be crucial to the president's political legacy, nearly a decade after he first descended the escalator in Trump Tower to give a campaign announcement speech in which he depicted Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump backs Musk's cost-cutting after report on billionaire's alleged drug use
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump commended Elon Musk for helping cut government spending despite "outrageous abuse" on the day of a report about the billionaire adviser's alleged drug use during the 2024 campaign. 'He willingly accepted the outrageous abuse and slander and lies and attacks because he does love our country,' Trump said in the Oval Office. 'Americans owe him a great debt of gratitude.' 'He had to go through the slings and the arrows, which is a shame because he's an incredible patriot,' Trump added later. A reporter tried to ask Musk about a New York Times report about his alleged drug use during the 2024 campaign. But Musk, who said, "some of the slingers are in this room," dismissed the question from a publication that he said had falsely written about Russian interference in the 2016 election. "Let's move on," Musk said, standing behind the president at the Resolute Desk. The meeting came the same day the New York Times reported that Musk allegedly used drugs such as ketamine more frequently than previously known while campaigning with Trump in 2024. The paper said it was unclear whether Musk used drugs while working for Trump in the Department of Government Efficiency. Trump commended Musk repeatedly during the press conference for finding at least $160 billion in savings and said the billionaire corporate chief would continue to offer advice about how to make the government more efficient. 'Elon has worked tirelessly helping lead the most sweeping and consequential government reform program in generations," Trump said. Musk, whose last day as a government adviser was May 30, has been critical of the House-passed package of legislation filled with Trump's priorities to cut taxes and bolster border enforcement. As the Senate prepares to debate the bill, Musk argued it didn't cut government spending enough. 'Elon's really not leaving," Trump said. "He's going to be back and forth, I think, I have a feeling." Musk, the CEO of carmaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, and owner of social-media platform X, acknowledged in March 2024 that he used prescription ketamine to combat bouts of depression. He worried corporate executives by puffing on a marijuana cigarette during a podcast in 2018. The New York Times story built on a Wall Street Journal story in January 2024 that alleged Musk used drugs such as LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. The campaign featured some erratic behavior, such as Musk jumping on stage behind Trump during an October rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Musk didn't respond to reporters' questions related to his drug use, but he has previously acknowledged using "small amount" of ketamine "once every other week" and marijuana "almost never." The New York Times reported that his ketamine use was often enough to affect his bladder. Ketamine is an anesthetic that also has some hallucinogenic effects, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The drug gained widespread recognition after the overdose death of 'Friends' television star Matthew Perry in October 2023. Musk told journalist Don Lemon during a YouTube interview in March 2024 that he took ketamine occasionally to combat depression. 'Ketamine is helpful for getting someone out of a negative frame of mind,' Musk said. He denied abusing it. 'If you use too much ketamine, you can't really get work done,' Musk said. 'I have a lot of work.' Musk could also be seen on video smoking marijuana during the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in September 2018. He said he partook 'almost never.' Tesla's chief accounting officer, Dave Morton, quit just a month into the job, the company said in a filing the same day as that podcast. The company's chief people officer, Gaby Toledano, also announced she would not return from a leave of absence, just over a year after joining the company. Lemon asked Musk about smoking marijuana. 'I had one puff,' Musk said. 'I think anyone who smokes pot can tell I don't know how to smoke pot.' 'I can't really get wasted because I can't get my work done,' Musk added. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino announced on May 26 that the agency was investigating cocaine found in the White House when President Joe Biden was in office in 2023. The Secret Service closed that investigation in July 2023, citing "a lack of physical evidence," and concluded an investigation into the cocaine mystery without identifying a suspect. "Shortly after swearing in, the Director and I evaluated a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest," Bongino wrote. The FBI didn't respond to a request for comment about Musk's alleged drug use. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, brushed off a reporter's question on May 30 about whether the administration was concerned about Musk's possible drug use. 'The drugs that we are concerned about are the drugs coming across the southern border,' Miller said. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump praises Musk cutting government spending despite 'attacks'
The Sun
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Elon Musk ‘took so much ketamine on campaign trail it affected his bladder… as Tesla boss also used ecstasy & mushrooms'
ELON Musk took an extensive amount of drugs while helping Donald Trump be reelected as president, it has been claimed. The Tesla boss reportedly used ketamine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms at an alarming rate during the campaign trail last year. 8 8 8 The 53-year-old tech mogul was even said to have taken ketamine so often that it left him with serious bladder problems, according to claims published in the New York Times. Musk reportedly told his associates in spring last year - around the same time he first endorsed Trump for the presidency - that he was feeling the effects of the powerful substance. Bladder problems are a known consequence of chronic abuse of ketamine, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). It remains unclear whether Musk was ever under the influence of any drugs during his time inside the White House. The world's richest man was also travelling with a daily supply of approximately 20 pills at one point, the report added. These were stored in a medication box with Adderall markings alongside other substances, according to sources who have seen photographs of the container. This left those around him to say he had developed a "serious ketamine habit", say the NYT. The alleged drug usage is said to have worsened around the same time as Musk endorsed Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Musk has previously admitted to using ketamine in small doses to help with depression as it can be legally prescribed in the US. But in most workplaces its usage would likely violate federal workplace policies. He is also said to have taken ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms in recent months. Ecstasy is classified by the DEA as a Schedule I controlled substance which means it has no accepted medical use. Elon Musk reveals truth behind his mystery black eye during White House farewell & jokes he 'wasn't near Macron's wife' This means it is completely banned for all federal employees and is illegal across the US. It comes as President Trump officially said goodbye to Musk earlier today as he exited the 'Department of Government Efficiency' (DOGE) and left the White House. Musk wore a black t-shirt with the words "The Dogefather" in the style of The Godfather emblazoned on the front. He was also seen with a black eye as he stood next to Trump in the Oval Office. It was later revealed that the nasty injury was from his five-year-old son X who had accidentally hit him when the two were playing. He was quizzed by a reporter around the drug claims in the NYT report. Musk did not directly respond but attacked the news site. 8 8 8 He said: 'Is that the same publication that got a Pulitzer Prize for false reporting on the Russiagate? 'Is it the same organisation? Let's move on.' His comments referenced claims made by the NYT that Russian interference had compromised the 2016 presidential election which Trump won. Musk officially announced he was leaving his role as Trump's "secretary of cost-cutting" this week after a dramatic 130-day White House stint. Despite promising to save American taxpayers $2trillion, DOGE estimates its cuts have actually saved around $175billion. Musk's time in office was marked by a slew of dramatic moments. This includes him brandishing a chainsaw on stage and even putting on a Tesla sales pitch outside the White House. At one point, an erratic Musk even appeared to do a "Nazi salute" on stage at a celebration for Trump's election win in January. He denied the gesture was purposefully done and hit out at critics. Donald Trump and Elon Musk's complicated relationship PRESIDENT Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk's relationship started rocky, but the pair have since reconciled after Musk fully endorsed Trump during his election campaign. In 2022, Elon Musk and Donald Trump publicly feuded on X as the president called Musk a liar and a "bulls**t artist" during a rally in Alaska. In response to Trump's critiques, the SpaceX founder clapped back. "I don't hate the man, but it's time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset," Musk posted. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, their feud reignited. Musk initially backed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to be the Republican Party's presidential nominee. But despite their past issues, Trump and Musk's relationship took a turn last March after they met at Mar-a-Lago. Then after the assassination attempt at Trump's rally in July, Musk fully announced his support for the former president in a shock move. "I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery," Musk wrote on X after the shooting. During a recent press conference, Trump then spoke highly of Musk saying: "I respect Elon a lot. He respects me. "Elon, more than almost anybody I know, he loves this country. He loves the concept of this country, but like me, he says this country is in big trouble, it's in tremendous danger." Musk went on to pay millions to help the Trump campaign as he appeared at several rallies and became the future president's right hand man. Since winning the election they have remained close and been pictured at events at Mar-a-Lago and the UFC. Trump even selected Musk to lead the Department of Government Efficiency - a taskforce aimed at cutting bureaucracy. Musk's son was also seen smiling and playing around with Trump inside the Oval Office earlier this year. The SpaceX chief has previously spoken out about his often odd mannerisms and behaviour after a report alleged illegal drugs are the cause. In January 2024, a Wall Street Journal report claimed in 2018, the Tesla CEO took multiple tabs of acid at a party in Los Angeles, Shrooms in 2019, and ketamine in 2021. Musk responded by saying he agreed to three years of random drug testing at NASA's request recently. SpaceX has a strict drug-free workplace policy for all its employees - including top bosses due to its government contracts. But insiders told the NYT that Musk will always be given prior notice of when the random drug tests will be taking place. It is unclear if the White House has drug testing policies for all its staff and if Musk was ever tested. 8 8
