Sanders asks whether Trump would be working for Musk in hypothetical second term

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) expressed concern about the potential extent to which tech billionaire Elon Musk could influence the government and its policy if former President Trump is elected to a second term.

Sanders, in an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, was asked about recent reporting in the Wall Street Journal that said Musk and Russian President Vladimir Putin have been in touch since late 2022 and have had conversations on a range of issues, including “personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.”

“No, I don’t think it’s appropriate,” Sanders told Welker in the interview before raising concerns about his potential influence in a hypothetical second Trump administration.

“Look, Musk is a very smart, aggressive guy. He is the wealthiest person in the world, and what really interests me is – if, God forbid, Trump would win – whether it would be Elon Musk running the government and Trump working for him, or the other way around,” Sanders said.

“But the idea that you have somebody like Musk, who has massive amounts of federal contracts, campaigning hard, putting huge amounts of money into Trump’s campaign,” he continued. “Man, if there’s ever been a conflict of interest, that’s it.”

Musk has played an active role in the former president’s campaign for a second term. He has held events for the former president, donated large sums of money to the effort, and used his platform on X to help push the former president’s message and bash his political opponents.

The Trump campaign responded to Sanders’s remarks by praising Musk’s leadership skills and reiterating Trump’s position on the Russia-Ukraine war. 

“Elon Musk is a once-in-a-generation industry leader, and our broken federal bureaucracy could certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency. As for Putin, there’s only one candidate in the race that he did not invade another country under, and it’s President Trump. President Trump has long said that he will re-establish his peace through strength foreign policy to deter Russia’s aggression and end the war in Ukraine,” Trump Campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Updated at 3:01 pm EDT.