Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and the person considered the backbone of Trump's successful presidential campaign, shared a picture on Tuesday (local time) of his dinner with US President Donald Trump and the First Lady, Melania Trump, sending social media into a frenzy.
"Had a lovely dinner last night with @POTUS and @FLOTUS," the Tesla boss said in his post on X, adding, "2026 is going to be amazing!"
The picture suggests a renewed closeness between the two friends who had a public falling out last year over Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill. The fact that their relationship had improved from those lows were evident during the funeral of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk. Musk had then also posted a picture with the US President, with the caption, "For Charlie".
Musk keeps backing Trump
Despite their fallout, Musk has been backing key policies of Trump, including the action on alleged child daycare frauds in Minnesota.
He has also publicly backed the Trump administration on their strikes in Venezuela and shared posts making fun of the Latin American country's captured President, Nicolas Maduro.
Musk's satellite internet company, Starlink, has also announced that it will be providing free broadband service to the people of Venezuela through 3 February amid the ongoing crisis in the country.
"It is heartwarming to see so many Venezuelans celebrating their country freed from a brutal tyrant," Musk said in another post on X.
Musk under fire over Grok generating 'vulgar content'
Musk's photo with the US President and the First Lady comes amid Grok, the AI chatbot created by his company xAI, inviting controversy after it began acting on user requests on X to turn photos of individuals into sexualised versions of the same without the subject's consent.
This viral trend which swept the social media platform recently has led to French ministers reported the same to prosecutors. In India, the IT ministry has sent a letter to X's India office, wherein it flagged that X has not been able to prevent the misuse of the chatbot, which is being used to generate sexually explicit images. Musk himself, on Friday, appeared to make light of the trend, posting laugh-cry emojis while reacting to AI-edited pictures of notable individuals, including himself, in bikinis.
Musk later said in reply to a post defending Grok, “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
