Reuters
If things had gone differently, two of the most polarizing men of 2023 might have partnered up two decades ago.
According to a new book by Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk traveled to New York in around 2000 to meet with Rudy Giuliani—then the city’s mayor—hoping to secure him as a “political fixer” for Musk’s online payments business, PayPal.
The meeting didn’t go well. “It was like walking into a mob scene,” Michael Moritz, a key PayPal investor who tagged along for the trip, is quoted as saying in Elon Musk. Giuliani “was surrounded by goonish confidantes. He didn’t have any idea whatsoever about Silicon Valley, but he and his henchmen were eager to line their pockets.”