Fashion
Elon Musk’s Giant Leap
When one of the richest men in the world made a surprise cameo at a Trump rally in Butler, Pa., he did so with the gusto of a meme exploding.
Oh, to feel this free.
On Saturday evening, the interstellar entrepreneur Elon Musk didn’t merely walk onstage for his surprise cameo at a Trump rally in Butler, Pa.
He hopped onstage. He bounced. He jumped like a Pixy Stix-enhanced toddler who was up well past his bedtime.
During a day that vacillated between rousing and reflective (Butler was the site of what the F.B.I. has called an “attempted assassination” in July), Mr. Musk’s WWF-style entrance was a display of unbridled MAGA enthusiasm.
After being introduced by Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk charged onto the garlanded stage, as if he had been called to come on down at “The Price Is Right.” With a black-on-black “Make America Great Again” cap, Mr. Musk waved, he turned to the grandstands and, fatefully, he jumped with his arms stretched upward. It was a gesture of excitement that probably would have been more expected at a Foo Fighters concert than a political rally.
And then, the image began bouncing around the internet. Throughout the weekend, footage of a hopping happy Mr. Musk bounced around X, the app he bought for $44 billion two years ago. Mr. Musk’s brisk, if halting, speech hardly made a ripple online. But images of the airborne exec, his “Occupy Mars” shirt rising to reveal a Tesla belt buckle and a slice of midriff, have been seen tens of millions of times.
To Trump supporters, Mr. Musk’s appearance was an authentic display of the optimistic fervor that their chosen candidate inspires. Detractors were harsher, interpreting Mr. Musk’s bunny hops as a cringe-y spectacle from a tech savant with a history of awkward public appearances. Memorably, at The New York Times’s DealBook summit last year, Mr. Musk called the interviewer by the wrong name, used vulgar language and offered a stiff apology for antisemitic conspiracy theories on X.
