The untold story of Elon Musk's first Oval Office meeting

Elon Musk has been a consistent presence in the Oval Office during the first month of President Donald Trump’s second term.

But even as Musk held court in the Oval earlier this month, clad in his black Make America Great Again cap, it was not his first time there.

And the tenor of that very first meeting — five years ago nearly to the day — did not at all match the bro-y bonhomie that Fox News’ Sean Hannity captured in his primetime sitdown with the two men last week.

Here are the details, according to a person in the meeting, reported here for the first time:

Shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic began in the United States in 2020, Musk traveled to Washington to meet with Trump about building a Tesla gigafactory in Mexico instead of Texas — a plan Trump had caught wind of and had invited Musk to the West Wing to discuss.

Before the meeting, Musk and an associate met with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then were hosted by Tim Pataki, who served as assistant to the president and the deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison. A person who was within earshot of Musk — who West Wing Playbook granted anonymity to describe a private conversation — later recounted that Musk called Trump “a fucking moron” behind his back while in the White House.

“We walk into the Oval, and he kind of looks around, and he's looking around,” this person in the room said. “He's like, ‘Gosh, I tell you. I mean, I was just in China and man, their palaces just make the White House kind of look more like an outhouse.’”

Trump, this person said, fumed, as National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and four of his staffers stood by silently. (Kudlow did not return a request for comment).

In the meeting, Trump claimed to own two Teslas in his car collection. But there was a problem suggesting the president was not fully familiar with how the cars work: When Tesla’s supercharging network came up, Trump seemed perplexed, as Musk and a colleague explained the technology.

But the two did find common ground on at least one topic. With the pandemic bearing down on the world, this person in the meeting said, “they talked a little about Covid, and both of them were equally dismissive of Covid and just how it was basically the flu, and people are freaking out for no reason, and all that stuff.”

A White House spokesperson did not return a POLITICO request for comment — and an email to X’s press contact went unanswered.

Musk, it's easy to forget, served on three Trump advisory councils in 2017: the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative, the Strategic and Policy Forum, and a business advisory group focused on infrastructure. And the relationship wasn’t easy.

When Trump announced he would pull out of the Paris Climate Accords on June 1, 2017, Musk had had enough. "Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world," he tweeted.

Later, in 2022, Trump went after Musk and provided photo evidence of the Oval meeting: “When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, “drop to your knees and beg,” and he would have done it…”

Musk had embarked on a deal to buy Twitter, and Trump seemed upset over Musk saying he was too old to run for president again. “Elon never told me he only voted for Democrats. In fact, he told me he voted for ‘Trump’, and would do so again. Now he’s going to pay a big price for signing a bad contract for a bad company,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

That Musk later became Trump’s biggest financial backer — giving $288 million to his 2024 presidential bid — and then one of his closest advisers, is the latest example of how both men make decisions and build relationships based on a real politik calculus. And how both see themselves as engaging in a transactional relationship.

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