Elon Musk is a politician.
On Twitter (er, X), the website Musk bought to reclaim free speech, he routinely mocks transgender people, claims the pro-diversity movement is racism against white people, and foments conspiracy theories about George Soros, vaccines, and illegal immigration.
Yes, Musk is a political animal. That animal is the elephant.
On Saturday, after Trump was shot in the ear in an assassination attempt, Musk formally declared his support for Trump, posting, “I fully support President Trump and wish him a speedy recovery.” He also endorsed running mate J.D. Vance, called on the head of the Secret Service to resign, claimed the press had “misled the public,” and called Trump the toughest candidate since Theodore Roosevelt.
The Wall Street Journal later reported that Musk planned to donate $45 million a month to a new pro-Trump super PAC run by Silicon Valley conservatives Joe Lonsdale and the Winklevoss twins, making him one of the Republican Party’s leading megadonors and limiting his influence over the party.
While Musk is the richest man in some ways, he is stingy with money and doesn’t like to donate (except to his own charities). Moreover, it’s unclear whether he has the liquidity needed to make this donation; Musk famously had to take out a $22 billion loan to buy Twitter. Does he have the cash? Will he need to sell Tesla shares to make this donation work?
One thing is certain about Musk’s political giving: if he spends money, he sees it as an investment, and his full support for Trump has transformed him from tech mogul and provocateur into internet shitposter, pro-Trump Twitter owner and mega-donor to the Republican Party.
The South African-born Tesla and SpaceX CEO became a US citizen more than 20 years ago and has donated to both major parties since then, while claiming he has consistently voted Democrat for president, including for Joe Biden in 2020. But according to Business Insider, Musk has spent eight times as much money on Republican candidates since 2017 as he has on Democratic candidates, and hasn’t donated to any Democrat since Delaware Sen. Chris Coons in 2020.
His trolling predates his overt partisanship: In 2018 alone, Musk smoked marijuana on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” called cave divers pedophiles after rescuing children from a Thai cave, and falsely claimed he had secured funding to take Tesla private. Then, after the Securities and Exchange Commission accused him of fraud, he told CBS News that he had “no respect for the SEC at all” (he settled, but later sued over the settlement terms).
That was all before he launched his half-serious, half-serious campaign to buy Twitter, outbidding it with a marijuana-poking offer of $54.20 a share, or $44 billion, which was ultimately accepted by the company’s board of directors, to his dismay. And yes, a lengthy legal battle ensued.
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I expected the Republican National Convention to be dark and tense, but it was anything but. Was Thomas Crooks a good shot? He didn’t have to be. Trump’s running mate wrote a bestselling memoir. Rereading it now, it’s astonishing. My husband has been siphoning the fruits of my hard work for years. I’m sick of it.
But in recent years, Musk has gone full Red Pill, not only laundering far-right political views but also using his social media platforms to enable the free flow of hate speech, harassment, and misinformation, gleefully rolling back content rules put in place under his predecessor’s corporate leadership. He also reinstated the once-valued Trump account that the former president banned after using it to incite violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Despite Musk’s gestures, however, Trump has largely stuck to TruthSocial.)
But Musk’s support for Trump and MAGA politics is as fervent as ever. They’re like two people: Musk for Trump, or Trump for Musk, both driven by power, fame and narcissism.
So Musk’s motivations for supporting Trump are mostly practical, and certainly not purely ideological. Despite his criticism of the government, Musk relies on government support for his main businesses: SpaceX has won billions of dollars in contracts from the federal government, and Tesla benefits heavily from subsidies for electric vehicles. Perhaps Musk can persuade Vance, who is pushing for subsidies for U.S.-made gasoline cars but not EVs, to change his mind.
Musk has nearly completed his evolution from internet troll to wannabe Republican oligarch. Money isn’t everything, but it carries a lot of weight in Washington, and he knows that to make money in Trump’s America, he may have to spend it.