Was Donald Trump selling Elon Musk Truth Social?

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reportedly offered tech billionaire and CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk last year to buy his social media platform Truth Social last summer however, the deal was not closed, according to a Washington Post report Tuesday.

The latest report regarding the exchanges of both the businessmen revealed that they have been communicating more than it was earlier known.

Confirming the exchanges, Donald Trump’s advisers said that their discussion also included politics other than business.

Last week, a New York Times report revealed that Donald Trump and Elon Musk met privately underlining the monetary strain on financing the former president’s White House bid compared to Democrats. 

A considerable sum of money is being spent on the 77-year-old’s legal troubles.

Confirming his meeting with the CEO of X — formerly called Twitter — Trump noted that he wasn’t sure if the 52-year-old billionaire would financially support his reelection.

"I don’t know. I’ve been friendly with him over the years," Trump told CNBC’s SquawkBox.

The criminally charged former president said last week: "I’ve helped him; when I was president I, helped him. I’ve liked him. We obviously have opposing views on a minor subject called electric cars. I’m all for electric cars, but you have to have all the alternatives also."

As the discussions increased about Musk pouring money into Trump’s White House race, the CEO of Tesla wrote on X that he is “not donating money to either candidate for US President.”

Musk — who is ambitious about taking humans to Mars — has been raising his voice in favour of conservative ideology on X. He wrote on his social media platform last week: "Importing voters and creating a national security threat from unvetted illegal immigrants."

While responding to the Washington Post’s question about the Truth Social and X's merger and other talks, Musk said that he had "never been to Mar-a-Lago," Trump’s residence in Florida, Palm Beach.

Trump Media spokeswoman Shannon Devine said in a statement: "We heard Trump and Musk were actually discussing buying the Washington Post but they decided it had no value."

According to the Post report, a reason why the businessman-turned-politician did not post on X is to maintain the financial value of his own Truth Social platform.

Recently, he has been promoting it and encouraging others to join. "It’s hot," he says, often polling visitors to Mar-a-Lago about whether they have an account, according to the report.

The only post on X he did was when his mugshot was released from an Atlanta jail, where he was indicted for the fourth time on charges of overturning the 2020 election results in the state.

The owner of space company Musk in 2022 said Truth Social had a "terrible name" and that it was "time for Trump to hang up his hat [and] sail into the sunset."

In response, Trump posted a photo of the two men in the Oval Office with a caption: "When Musk visited the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidised projects … I could have said ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it."

He added that "Musk should focus on getting himself out of the Twitter mess," terming the site "worthless".