Donald Trump says Elon Musk has earned “plenty of right” to ask him for personal favors. In a lengthy interview with Newsmax’s Greg Kelly on Tuesday evening, Trump applauded the work carried out by Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. “He’s basically a patriot,” Trump told Kelly, admitting that he “hardly knew” the Tesla CEO prior to the election campaign. “He’s a wonderful patriot; he loves the country. But he’s never asked me—think of this, and he’s got plenty of right to I guess, doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it, I probably won’t—but he’s never asked me for a favor.” He added: “As an example, I just got rid of the electric car mandate... And he never came to me and said, ‘Could you do me a favor? Don’t do that?’ You know, he’s a legitimate guy, and he’s doing this because it’s for the good of the country. We are finding hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud.” Elsewhere in the interview, Trump said he believed certain left-wing billionaires are “involved” in the angry backlash against Tesla.
