Elon Musk has only visited the White House once during Joe Biden’s term

Elon Musk has tense relationship with US President Joe Biden

Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk visited the White House in September for the first time during President Joe Biden’s term, a stark contrast from his many visits during the previous two administrations.

Musk showed up in the West Wing on September 13, according to a White House visitor log released in late December. A White House official said the billionaire did not meet with Biden, with whom he has a strained relationship, but instead sat down with top administration aides responsible for technology policy to discuss artificial intelligence.

Musk traveled to Washington for an artificial intelligence summit with lawmakers and executives at the U.S. Capitol.

NBC News reported earlier Wednesday that the White House meeting with Musk was one of many meetings Biden’s staff is holding with stakeholders as he “strategies the roadblocks for any government in the world on artificial intelligence safety, The most important actions taken in terms of security and trust”. spokesperson Robin Patterson said in a statement.

“The Biden-Harris administration has made it clear to tech leaders that companies need to ensure their products are safe before releasing them to the public,” she added.

Musk also runs Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and owns X, formerly Twitter, and has an artificial intelligence startup called xAI. His representatives did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment Wednesday evening.

White House officials said this was Musk’s only visit to the White House during Biden’s presidency. By contrast, he visited the executive mansion multiple times during the Obama and Trump administrations.

The disparity points to a frosty relationship between Biden and Musk.

Musk, the world’s richest man according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is angry about the president’s electric vehicle policy, which he says has snubbed Tesla in favor of companies with unionized workers like General Motors Co. .

He accused Biden and his administration of “bias” against his company and cited a 2021 EV event at the White House from which Tesla was excluded.

Musk said in November (more than two months after visiting the White House) that he voted for Biden in 2020 but did not expect to vote again in 2024.

Biden administration officials have met with Musk before, but not at the White House. Last January, senior climate adviser John Podesta and infrastructure adviser Mitch Landrieu sat down with Musk to discuss ways to advance electric vehicle production.

Biden spent much of his presidency refusing to mention Tesla when promoting his electric vehicle policies, although he gave the company rare praise last year for opening parts of its charging network to other electric vehicles. Still, Biden has expressed support for the United Auto Workers union’s efforts to form Tesla, something Musk has strongly resisted.

The White House also condemned Musk’s anti-Semitic posts on X as “abhorrent” and “unacceptable.”

The president and Musk have sometimes exchanged insults about teenagers.

In 2022, Musk called Biden “a soggy human puppet” after not inviting him to a White House meeting of business leaders.

Later that year, Biden responded to Musk’s pessimistic forecasts for the U.S. economy, saying “he’s lucky with his trip to the moon.”