Elon Musk speaking at the symposium about antisemitism, organized by the European Jewish Association, in Krakow, Poland.STR/NurPhoto/AP
Long gone are the innocent days when media outlets claimed the independence and nuance of the politics of Elon Musk. Now, amid myriad X posts spreading far-right propaganda on immigrants, trans people, and, well, just about any other topic, it has become obvious where one of the richest men in the world stands.
This week, there was more proof that Musk has put his money where his mouth has been. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Musk poured tens of millions of dollars into Republican campaigns and conservative groups even before he publicly endorsed Donald Trump in July. Conservatives helped conceal Musk’s contributions through so-called social welfare or “dark money” groups that do not have to disclose their donors and can raise unlimited funds. (Musk did not respond to the Journal’s request for comment.)
One piece of reporting stood out. The newspaper found that the tech billionaire donated more than $50 million in 2022 for campaign advertisements by Citizens for Sanity, a group connected to former Trump aide Stephen Miller and his non-profit America First Legal, which bills itself as “the long-awaited answer to the ACLU.”
Ties to Miller back in 2022 illuminate Musk’s current penchant for posting about immigrants. Musk has increasingly aligned himself with xenophobic anti-migrant plans and trans hysteria championed by Miller within the Trump administration.
As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote, Trump has vowed to conduct “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” Miller and others have worked for years to develop a plan—including deploying the National Guard, constructing massive detention camps through executive order, and packing the federal government with their own people.
In recent months, Musk’s posts have sunken to lies of mass voter fraud to help Trump win. As I reported, the billionaire recently posted a rant about how Democrats are the true threat to democracy by fast-tracking asylum seekers for citizenship so that they can vote in swing states. Simple fact-checking finds that asylum seekers are not being flown to battleground states, are not being given a facilitated citizenship process, and are not being allowed to vote—it is all false.
As we previously noted, these statements fall within the 2024 iteration of the Republicans’ “Big Lie.” If Trump loses in November, then Democrats stole the election through noncitizen voters.
Musk has also directly aligned himself with Trump, founding a super PAC called America PAC to get 800,000 people to vote for the former president in key battleground states. According to the Guardian, Trump’s ground operation in swing states are now mostly outsourced to America PAC, and Business Insider said that Musk is now shelling out millions to Republicans in 15 competitive House races. Yesterday, Politico reported that America PAC was teaming up with Turning Point Action, the political advocacy division of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, to fund hundreds of “ballot chasers” in Wisconsin.
Musk also announced yesterday on X that he would attend Trump’s comeback rally on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, the location of an assassination attempt against the former president in July.
So much for claiming to be politically moderate.
