Elon Musk Is Putting His Money Where His Memeposts Are
Money isn’t everything, but it goes a long way in Washington.
Elon Musk is a political animal.
On Twitter—er, X—the website Musk bought to restore free speech or something like that, he routinely makes fun of trans people, claims that diversity initiatives are racist against white people, and stirs up conspiracy theories about George Soros, vaccines, and undocumented immigrants.
Yes, Musk is a political animal. That animal is an elephant.
On Saturday, after Trump was shot in the ear during a failed assassination attempt, Musk formally threw his support behind Trump, posting, “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.” He also endorsed his vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, called on Secret Service leadership to resign, claimed that news outlets had “misled the public,” and called Trump the toughest candidate since Theodore Roosevelt.
Then, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk plans to contribute as much as $45 million a month to a new pro-Trump super PAC run by Silicon Valley conservatives Joe Lonsdale and the Winklevoss twins. This would make Musk one of the leading Republican megadonors and uncap his influence on the party.
Musk is the richest person alive by some counts, but he’s stingy with his money and doesn’t like to give it away (unless it’s to his own charity). Plus, it’s unclear if he has the liquidity he needs to make this donation: Musk famously had to take out $22 billion in loans to purchase Twitter. Does he have the cash? Will he need to sell Tesla stock to make this work?
One thing is certain about Musk’s political donations: If he’s spending the money, he’s looking at it as an investment, and his full-throated endorsement of Trump completes his transformation from tech mogul–provocateur to internet shitposter to red-pilled Twitter owner to Republican megadonor.
The South African–born CEO of Tesla and SpaceX became an American citizen more than two decades ago and since then has donated money to both major parties while claiming that he has consistently voted Democrat for president—even for Joe Biden in 2020. But since 2017, Musk has spent eight times as much money on Republican candidates as on Democrats, according to Business Insider—and hasn’t given to any Democrat since Delaware Sen. Chris Coons in 2020.
His trollishness has predated his overt partisanship. In 2018 alone, Musk smoked weed on The Joe Rogan Experience, called a cave diver a pedophile after he rescued children from a cave in Thailand, and falsely claimed that he had secured funding to take Tesla private—then told CBS News he had “no respect for the SEC” after the securities regulator charged him with fraud (which he settled, and later sued over the terms of the settlement).
That was all before he kinda-seriously-kinda-not-seriously campaigned to buy Twitter—overbidding with a weed-joke offer of $54.20 a share, or $44 billion, a proposal that, to his eventual dismay, was accepted by the company’s board of directors—yes, a lengthy court battle ensued then too.
But in recent years, Musk has become fully red-pilled, not only laundering far-right political views but also using his social media platform to allow the free flow of hate speech, harassment, and misinformation—gleefully rolling back content rules put in place under previous corporate leadership. And he has restored Trump’s once-prized account, from which the former president was banned after using it to incite violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (However, despite Musk’s gesture, Trump has stuck mostly to Truth Social.)
But Musk’s embrace of Trump—and MAGA politics—has never been warmer. They’re cut from the same cloth: Think of Musk as a Trumpian figure or Trump as a Muskian figure, both motivated by power and notoriety and narcissism.
Thus, Musk’s motivations to support Trump are largely practical, certainly not purely ideological. Despite his critiques of the government, Musk depends on government support for his primary businesses. SpaceX has received billions in federal contracts, and Tesla benefits significantly from electric-vehicle subsidies. Maybe he’ll be able to get Vance, who is pushing for the subsidization of American-made gas cars, rather than EVs, to change his tune.
Musk’s evolution from internet troll to wannabe Republican oligarch is nearly complete. Money isn’t everything, but it goes a long way in Washington. Musk knows he might have to spend money to make money in Trump’s America.
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