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.
Partisan reads aside, Mr. Musk’s leaping glee reflected a sense of unbridled abandon that we don’t witness much in daily life — particularly from a middle-aged male executive. After all, when was the last time you saw a 53-year-old man literally jump for joy?
Mr. Musk’s entrance should perhaps be sorted with sport’s reactions — Argentina fans ripping their shirts asunder when Messi scores a goal or Mets fans hugging their friends when the team makes the playoffs — as clips of giddy, spontaneous elation that, when removed from their original context, live on in internet infamy.
But in this case, the political backdrop is important. Politics are, after all, a harsh and unforgiving arena when it comes to expressing pure, unselfconscious happiness. In 2004, the former Vermont governor Howard Dean torpedoed his presidential campaign when he let out a high-pitched “yeah” during a speech in Iowa. The clip of the all-too-excited candidate would be replayed hundreds of times on cable television and today, the “Dean scream” still has its own Wikipedia page.
More recently, on July 4, 2021, Mark Zuckerberg attempted to burnish his own patriotic image through an Instagram clip of him hydrofoiling with an American flag in hand. Many reactions zeroed in on how stiff the wet-suited Mr. Zuckerberg came across, only heightening the notion that tech leaders in particular don’t always have the best grasp on how the public will interpret their behavior.
If it was a risk for Mr. Musk to let his true, Trump-loving self fly during the rally, then the only feedback that really mattered came instantly, from the crowd itself.
Mr. Musk, who just two years ago tweeted that it was “time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset,” is now firmly aboard the Trump train. In recent months, he has used his prominent podium on X to throw his weight behind the candidate, lob barbs at Democratic rivals and rail against other business leaders like Mark Cuban who support Vice President Kamala Harris.
And so Mr. Musk’s appearance in Pennsylvania on Saturday could be read as his final convergence into the contemporary American political conversation. It was at least an opportunity for his online support to leap off X and onto a physical stage.
And how did the MAGA-happy masses receive him? When he jumped, the crowd of thousands roared. So what did Mr. Musk do? He jumped again.
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