“All in”: How Elon Musk is betting everything to elect Donald Trump in the USA

In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, the world’s richest man became involved in the US election in a way unprecedented in modern history.

Elon Musk, seen over the weekend jumping for joy alongside former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, now speaks with the Republican candidate several times a week.

He has effectively moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania, the place he recently told confidants he believes is key to Trump’s re-election.

He tirelessly promoted Trump’s candidacy to his 201 million followers on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion and used to spread conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party and insult his running mate. -President Kamala Harris.

Above all, he is personally directing the actions of a super political action committee that he has funded with tens of millions of dollars to mobilize voters for Trump, not just in Pennsylvania but across the country. He even proposed taking a campaign bus tour of Pennsylvania and knocking on doors in person, in part to see how his money is being used.

Together, Musk’s actions paint a clear picture of his battle plan as he directs his efforts to elect Trump with the same frenetic energy and rigorous demands he has perfected at his companies SpaceX, Tesla and X.

As early as February, Musk was speaking apocalyptically, in private, about what he saw as the crucial need to defeat President Joe Biden. But even as he met with advisers in Austin, Texas, in April to plan his super PAC, Musk seemed to consider Trump just the lesser of two evils. He told friends in the spring that he wasn’t sure he wanted to explicitly support Trump.

These days, in private conversations, Musk is obsessed, almost maniacal, with the fallout from the election and the need for Trump to win. He praises Trump’s courage under pressure — he supported him the night of the Butler assassination attempt — and talks about how funny he is. One person who recently spoke with Musk recalled him saying, without a hint of irony, “I love Trump.”

Musk’s frantic involvement reflects his view of this moment in US history. In X, he warned in dark terms about the effects of progressive policies and censorship. He baselessly claimed that Democrats are trying to fill the country with illegal immigrants who would reward them with permanent power, warning that the 2024 election could be the last free election in the US.

It may be impossible to capture the financial value of all the support Musk is providing Trump. This is partly due to his role at X, where he amplifies much of the former president’s message. Trump has described in grandiose — and unverified — terms what Musk is donating to the super PAC, recently telling an associate the figure is $500 million.

But friends and colleagues say Musk is adopting the same strategy he has used during other crises he considers existential. Just as Musk worked late at night while his companies were on the brink of catastrophe, tinkering with rocket designs at SpaceX, sleeping on a couch at the Tesla factory, or making staff cuts at Twitter, Musk considered this an all-aboard moment. .

And so, just as he recruited friends, family and trusted people to Twitter after buying the company, Musk did the same at America PAC, which he founded to help Trump. More recently, Musk added Steve Davis, a former SpaceX engineer and head of its tunneling company, to the group, with Davis reprising a sidekick role he played after Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.

Ensconced in a Pittsburgh “war room” with a team of lawyers, public relations professionals, vote-raising experts and longtime friends, Musk is trying to apply strategies and business lessons from his businesses to an arduous political mission in just weeks. until Election Day. This article is based on interviews with 17 people familiar with Musk’s thinking and operations as Election Day approaches.

“I’m not sure there’s a precedent in modern history for how Musk inserted himself into the presidential race,” said Benjamin Soskis, a historian of the ultrarich.

The relationship between Trump and Musk has evolved over time.

Musk, who once called Trump a “stone-cold loser,” has an abundance of the things Trump values ​​most: wealth, fame and a massive platform.

Musk initially backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president and suggested Trump should “sail off into the sunset.” Trump responded that Musk begged on his knees for government subsidies. Still, Trump remained fascinated by Musk.

America PAC declined to comment, and Trump’s team did not provide a comment for this story. Musk did not return a request for comment.

Secret support, at first

The idea for the super PAC was born from two exclusive dinners. After DeSantis failed in the Republican primary, Musk began telling friends he wanted to find a way to support Trump — secretly.

At a dinner this year with a group of Trump-friendly billionaires, including Nelson Peltz and John Paulson, Musk expressed a sincere, if naïve, belief in the way politics should work. He dismissed the power of television advertising and spoke broadly about an organic movement to elect Trump, with supporters persuading others to join the cause. Two voters for two voters — that was how Trump would win, he said.

In April, Musk hosted a dinner at venture capitalist David Sacks’ Los Angeles home. There, Musk and a legion of some of the world’s richest people — including Rupert Murdoch, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former Trump supporter Peter Thiel — said that 10 by 10 voters was how Trump would win. Musk told about a dozen dinner companions that supporting Trump would be politically safe if they did so in large numbers — and so it was important for businesspeople to organize their peers.

Trump has made clear he appreciates the help, promising to appoint Musk to oversee a government efficiency team if he is reelected. At a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday night, Trump appeared obsessed with Musk, spinning stories about his conversations with Musk in three unrelated tangents and celebrating the “dark MAGA” hat that some attendees said they had bought. because Musk used it on Butler.

The relationship proved significant in other ways. Following the publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month by a reporter, the campaign connected with X to prevent links to the material from circulating on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. OX later blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account.

1 million voters

At the heart of Musk’s project is America PAC, an organization that the Trump campaign is relying on for significant help in knocking on doors in swing states and encouraging 800,000 to 1 million voters to vote for the former president. .

The group spent about $80 million to help Trump, according to federal records, mostly on its voter turnout program. Musk’s advisers have told donors that the group has about 2,500 organizers in the field, and the group has effectively acquired the Wisconsin assets of another group, Turning Points USA, taking on about 200 new poll workers in the state. During the training, some agents were shown posts by Musk on social media about the group, as a way of encouraging them.

The scale of Musk’s personal financial commitment will not be released until mid-month. Initially, Musk and his friends in the group talked about a budget totaling $140 million to $180 million, almost all of it from Musk. The group has told other potential donors in recent weeks that it is fully funded.

The Trump campaign is conducting something of an experiment by outsourcing parts of its voter contact operation to America PAC and other groups. This is possible because of new federal election guidance that allows political campaigns to coordinate their activities more closely with outside organizations.

The campaign has signed a data-sharing agreement with America PAC and several others, and works closely with them to assess which voters are most important to speak to in their homes.

Still, some in Trump’s circle are uncertain about the effectiveness of the outside efforts. Some super PAC donors have complained that Musk is relying on the same team that formed DeSantis’ core advisers when he unsuccessfully attempted a similar effort in the Republican primary.

Veterans of past campaigns argue that voter turnout operations often take months or even years to become effective machines. There is little precedent for successfully assembling a group of this scale just months before a presidential election.

And turmoil has plagued America PAC at times, as Musk has repeatedly dropped advisers and vendors who were providing poll workers and replaced them, at one point leaving hundreds of paid recruiters across the country.

A senior Trump campaign official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal views on America PAC, said the team was not “relying” on the group but considered it a “key” partner, along with many other outside groups, such as “ additional firepower.”

Spreading misinformation

If America PAC is the most ambitious and expensive manifestation of Musk’s support for Trump, nowhere has his enthusiasm been more evident than at X.

Since publicly supporting the former president in July, he has posted at least 109 times about Trump and the election. And while he has said in the past that the platform should be “politically neutral,” he has used it to promote election misinformation and the baseless claim that Democrats are engaged in “deliberate voter importing” and “fast-tracking” immigrants to citizenship for gain control over the electorate.

A post making that claim this month garnered nearly 34 million views, according to X’s own metrics, underscoring the scale of attention that Musk, owner of the platform’s most-followed account, can command.

“Unless Trump wins and we get rid of the mountain of stifling regulations (that have nothing to do with safety!), humanity will never get to Mars,” Musk wrote this month in a post that has garnered nearly 18 million views. “This is existential.”

Online, Musk painted a bleak picture of what would happen if Trump lost, a circumstance that could hurt Musk personally. In an interview with the former host of Tucker Carlson, he acknowledged “bashing Kamala nonstop” and being completely in favor of Trump.

If Trump loses, he joked, “how long do you think my prison sentence will last?”