President Donald Trump pledged to purchase a Tesla from his friend and fellow billionaire Elon Musk, whom Trump says is being unfairly persecuted for the good work he’s doing for the United States as the top figure at DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk’s most valuable brand, Tesla, has seen its stock and sales plummet recently, with many attributing the sales drop to boycotts in response to Musk’s political activity and his Trump alignment. Trump said he hopes his purchase will make the Tesla stock rise.
REPORTER: Do you think you buying a Tesla will boost Tesla and stock?
TRUMP: Well, I hope it does
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 11, 2025 at 4:21 PM
In what liberals derided as a cringey stunt, Trump also revealed how he intended to pay for his red Tesla — with a check. The President told Musk and the gathered media that he would pay the “old fashioned way” saying “I give checks. I like checks. I like a check better than this modern system of all of a sudden there’s money in your account — nobody knows. I like signing a check.”
Trump says he’s going to write a check for his new Tesla: “I do it the old-fashioned — I give checks. I like checks. I like a check better than this better system of, all of the sudden there’s money in your account. Nobody knows.
“I think his credit is good,” Elon Musk adds.
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 11, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Musk, of course, was one of the early executives at PayPal, the widely used electronic payment system whose chief innovation, to quote Trump, might be described as “all of sudden there’s money in your account.”
One amused responder wrote: “The guy who wants to be the king of crypto prefers to write a check.”
A certified member — with venture capitalist Peter Thiel, investor David Sacks, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and others — of Silicon Valley’s so-called PayPal Mafia, Musk is part of a group of tech legends whose massive fortunes got their start at PayPal. (All of a sudden, after PayPal, there was lots of money in their accounts.) Nevertheless Musk seemed willing to take Trump’s check, quipping that he believed the President’s credit is good.
NOTE: Check writing was the primary means of monetary exchange before widespread adoption of payment apps like PayPal, Apple Pay, Venmo, Zelle and others in the 21st century. A 2023 Washington Post article asserted that at the turn of the century 60% of “noncash purchases, gifts and paid bills were handled with checks.” By 2021, just 1 in 20 of those transactions involved a check, according the the Post, which said: “The paper check’s fall from grace has been meteoric.”