On Saturday, October 5, former president Donald Trump returned to Butler, Pennsylvania, for a rally lower than three months after the assassination try on his life on the identical location. This time, Trump appeared onstage with billionaire and X proprietor Elon Musk.
Trump’s supporters cherished it.
A day earlier than the marketing campaign occasion, Musk posted on X that he can be in attendance. The joy about his presence was palpable: On the highway resulting in the rally location, an digital billboard flashed a picture of Musk’s face and a rocket ship with textual content studying “In Musk we belief!” On a facet highway, the place lots of of attendees parked their vehicles, a Tesla cybertruck sported two Trump flags on the again.
As Musk took the stage, he was greeted with cheers. Hundreds of individuals took out their telephones to movie him. Musk known as on Trump’s supporters to register to vote, saying, “Get everybody you recognize, and everybody you don’t know. Drag them to register to vote.”
“In the event that they don’t, this would be the final election,” he added ominously. “That’s my prediction.”
And Trump supporters in Butler who spoke to WIRED mentioned that, though they’d been planning to attend the rally no matter Musk’s presence, they have been excited to have him within the MAGA fold. Some had even come from out of city to attend the occasion.
“That undoubtedly did sweeten the deal,” says Sherry O’Donnell, a Trump supporter who attended the Butler rally.
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“I used to be excited as a result of I actually like Elon Musk, and we love what he is doing with the area program,” Brian Yanoviak, who drove from japanese Pennsylvania to attend the rally, advised WIRED. Yanoviak was a delegate to the Republican Nationwide Conference. “He is very clever, very revolutionary. He understands what’s taking place to america. And he really cares about the way forward for our nation. Similar to Trump, similar to Tucker Carlson, similar to RFK Jr. … It is really a motion, and it is a motion to make America nice once more, as a result of if we do not, we’ll lose our republic.”
Musk’s look on the rally was half of a bigger get-out-the-vote effort from the billionaire and X proprietor. Over the previous few months, Musk has gone all in for the Trump marketing campaign and Republican candidates everywhere in the nation, spending tens of millions of {dollars}. Musk has additionally used his private X account to get out the vote, posting voter registration hyperlinks in swing states to his 200 million followers.
