Elon Musk plays many roles with President-elect Donald J. Trump. He is Mr. Trump’s most important donor, most influential social media promoter and a key adviser on policy and personnel.
For most of the time since Election Day, he has also been Mr. Trump’s tenant.
Mr. Musk has been using one of the cottages available for rent on Mr. Trump’s property at Mar-a-Lago, the former Marjorie Merriweather Post home in Florida that Mr. Trump converted into a members-only club and hotel in the 1990s, according to two people with knowledge of the arrangement. The cottage where he has been staying, named Banyan, is several hundred feet away from the main house, according to a person who knows the property.
Staying right on the grounds has helped provide Mr. Musk with easy access to Mr. Trump.
He can drop in on Mr. Trump’s dinners, such as one he had recently with Mr. Musk’s rival, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Mr. Musk, who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars in the final months of this year’s election cycle to help elect Mr. Trump, has attended personnel meetings in the Mar-a-Lago Teahouse, sat in on phone calls with foreign leaders and spent hours with Mr. Trump in his office. Mr. Musk’s employees from his various businesses have also been integrally involved in the transition, vetting prospective candidates for senior administration jobs, in interviews at the Trump transition headquarters in West Palm Beach….
Category Archives: Plutocrats United
“Elon Musk’s Political Influence Wears Down Global Resistance to Starlink”
“Here’s why business leaders are spending big on Trump’s inaugural committee”
Top CEOs and their companies are pledging to donate millions of dollars to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, as they seek to get on his good side and make inroads before he takes office.
Some of the planned donations reportedly include $1 million each from Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Facebook parent company Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg. Others include $2 million from Robinhood Markets and $1 million each from both Uber and its CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi.
Ford is reportedly coupling its own $1 million donation with a fleet of vehicles….
Empowered by a decisive electoral victory, Trump has vowed to revamp U.S. economic policy in a way that could have outsized benefits for a few favored industries, like fossil fuels.
At the same time, he has telegraphed the value, both personal and political, that he places on face-to-face meetings and public praise from chief executives of the world’s largest companies.
“EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump wrote Thursday in a post on Truth Social, the social media app run by his own tech company.
Many of those CEOs have already made, or are planning to make, trips to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, resort and de facto transition headquarters, as they seek to gain influence with and access to the incoming administration.
To that end, Trump’s inaugural committee presents a “unique opportunity,” said Brendan Glavin, director of research for the money-in-politics nonprofit OpenSecrets, in an interview….
“‘Co-president’ Elon Musk? Trump ally tests influence in spending fight”
Elon Musk has never been elected to office. President-elect Donald Trump has not tapped him to serve in any role inside the government. Until the July assassination attempt, he never even publicly supported Trump.
But this week, critics of the world’s richest man say he attained a new title: “shadow president” of the United States.
In a matter of hours on Wednesday, Musk wielded his powerful X account to pressure House Republicans to torpedo a spending bill that would have kept the federal government open for three months. Musk’s rapid-fire messages — which included numerous false claims about the contents of the spending bill — ricocheted through Washington, where some lawmakers reported their phone lines were ringing all day with calls from constituents who saw Musk’s posts. More than 12 hours after Musk’s first post calling lawmakers to not pass the bill, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance also put out a statement opposing the legislation, and House Republicans scrapped the deal….
Musk’s outsize role in sending the federal government careening toward a potential shutdown before Christmas has alarmed Democrats, academics and watchdog groups, while some Republicans said his intervention was uninformed.
The tech billionaire’s swift accumulation of political power has sparked criticism that the incoming Trump administration will function like an oligarchy, with Musk pushing for policies that will further enrich him and his companies. Trump has named Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy as co-chairs of an outside group dubbed the “Department of Government Efficiency,” which will advocate for vast cuts to federal spending….
Musk’s wealth, online following and political power have exploded since Trump’s November victory, after he emerged as the country’s largest political donor, throwing $277 million into backing Donald Trump and other Republicans. Many watchdog groups have raised concerns that Musk could abuse his access to Trump and role in shaping the Republican agenda at a time when he is the target of multiple government investigations and party to many lucrative government contracts.
Musk has conflicts of interest because of his businesses’ dependency on the government, said Martin Gilens, professor of public policy at UCLA who has studied economic inequality in political influence.
“It’s kind of a perfect storm, in the sense that he’s unelected and in a seemingly very influential position so that’s problematic to begin with,” he said.
“Elon Musk put $277 million into the election. He’s $200 billion richer this year.”
Elon Musk’s net worth has climbed by more than $200 billion in 2024, a massive increase in the sameyear that the world’s richest person spent at least$277 million backing Donald Trump and other Republican candidates.
The bulk of the increase, more than $170 billion, has come since Election Day.
Trump’s election sent stock in electric-vehicle maker Tesla, a company central to Musk’s wealth and where he is CEO, soaring. Shares were trading at prices about 70 percent higher on Friday than on Election Day.
As of Friday, Musk’s fortune was about $442 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That estimate includes a pay package from Tesla worth more than $50 billion that is held up in court after a Delaware judge ruled to strike it down in January and upheld her decision this month. Tesla has pledged to appeal.
Trump has indicated he will be friendly to businesses and investors of all kinds when he returns to office. Musk’s empire is poised to especiallybenefit from the president-elect’s promised cuts to regulation — and potentiallyalso overt favors to the tech billionaire, who has become a loyal political lieutenant.
Trump picked Musk to co-chair a nongovernmental advisory group on cuts to federal spending and regulation known as the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, potentially allowing the tech entrepreneur to shape policies that affect his businesses. Musk did not respond to a request for comment….
Democrats in Congress said the combination of Musk’s election spending, expectations that Trump will create policies favorable to the tech mogul and the recent increase in Musk’s net worth could ethically compromise the incoming administration.
“There is an outrageous and urgent conflict of interest for Elon Musk, a billionaire with business interests like Tesla, but also covering a wide range of industries, to be given any responsibility for corporate welfare disguised as government efficiency,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) said.
“Dismantling safety rules and oversight concerning self-driving vehicles simply drives up the stock price and undermines safety — with benefits to him and shareholders but not to drivers and others on the road.”
Blumenthal said Musk recently lobbied Republicans on Capitol Hill to clear a regulatory pathway for autonomy, the issue that later sent Tesla’s stock price soaring…..
“Elon Musk Is Positioning X Behind the New Trump Presidency”
Since Donald J. Trump won the presidential election, Elon Musk has gone all in on X to promote the incoming administration.
Mr. Musk, who owns X, posted on the platform about politics more than 400 times between Tuesday and Friday, celebrating Mr. Trump’s victory and talking about the causes that the president-elect should take up in office. Mr. Musk’s posts included a photo of himself and his son X Æ A-Xii Musk surrounded by Mr. Trump and his family at Mar-a-Lago, as well as another photo of himself with Mr. Trump that was captioned “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” a Latin phrase that appears on the dollar bill and means “a new order for the ages.”
Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, also chimed in. In reply to a post this week about the platform’s role in driving political conversation, she wrote, “Reporting for duty.”
Their comments show how Mr. Musk is increasingly positioning X as the platform behind the new Trump presidency. Since the election was called on Wednesday, Mr. Musk has used X to talk up how bright the future will be under the president-elect. In addition, he has urged X’s users to replace the news media and report on Mr. Trump’s triumphant return to office, and has promoted the platform as a go-to destination for continuing conservative conversation.
That comes on top of how Mr. Musk has used X as a battering ram for months to support Mr. Trump’s campaign. Mr. Musk, who endorsed Mr. Trump in July, held a wide-ranging audio conversation with him on X in August. That same month, Mr. Trump started using his reinstated account on the platform regularly.
On Tuesday, Mr. Musk held an audio town hall on the site urging his more than 203 million followers to vote for Mr. Trump. The president-elect credited Mr. Musk on Wednesday for helping secure his win. “A star is born — Elon!” Mr. Trump said during his victory speech.
Mr. Musk has “turned X into the church of the conservative movement,” said Steven Livingston, the founding director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University. “It’s gone from that public sphere to a bullhorn.”…
“Trump’s Victory Is a Major Win for Elon Musk and Big-Money Politics”
His victory lap was the culmination of an effort that began only six months ago and depended on a risky gamble: Mr. Musk’s new super PAC effectively led Mr. Trump’s get-out-the-vote operation in battleground states — and Mr. Trump entrusted a crucial campaign function to a political neophyte.
It is difficult to disentangle Mr. Musk’s ground work from other influences that propelled Mr. Trump to the White House. But there is little doubt that the election was a win not only for Mr. Musk but also big-money politics: An ultrawealthy donor took advantage of America’s evolving campaign-finance system to put his thumb on the scale like never before.
Mr. Musk almost single-handedly funded an effort that cost more than $175 million. His canvassers knocked on close to 11 million doors in presidential battleground states since August, including about 1.8 million in Michigan and 2.3 million in Pennsylvania, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Another $30 million was spent on a large direct-mail program, and about $22 million on digital advertising, including on Trump-friendly mediums like Barstool Sports.
When Mr. Musk first met with political advisers in the spring, he focused on turning out 800,000 to a million “low-propensity” voters in seven battleground states — people, especially in rural areas, who might be inclined to vote for Mr. Trump but who had spotty voting records. It is yet unclear whether Mr. Musk succeeded on that metric, although Mr. Trump claimed a dominating margin in rural areas, a focus of Mr. Musk’s.
The super PAC’s apparent success could inspire similar efforts, helping to transform modern campaigns. New guidance from the Federal Election Commission, issued in March, now allows presidential campaigns to closely coordinate field operations with super PACs.
“There is no reason to expend the precious hard money of federal campaigns on ground game activities if there are outside organizations with a proven track record and a verifiable infrastructure,” said the conservative activist Ralph Reed, whose own super PAC, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said it knocked on close to 10 million doors on Mr. Trump’s behalf.
“Billionaires’ new playground”
Billionaire DNA is coursing through the U.S. election system like never before, smashing campaign finance records and ushering in a new age of influence.
Why it matters: In an election that both sides see as existential, the moral guardrails for political spending are vanishing. Today’s billionaires are shredding populist taboos, driving news cycles and increasingly shaping the terms of American democracy.
The big picture: 150 billionaire families have spent a total of $1.9 billion in support of presidential and congressional candidates this cycle, according to a report by Americans for Tax Fairness released one week before the election.
- That’s $700 million (or 58%) more than the $1.2 billion spent by more than 600 individual billionaires during the 2020 election, according to the group’s analysis.
- A Financial Times analysis also published this week found that billionaires had contributed at least $695 million, or 18%, of the total funds raised by the presidential candidates and allied groups.
- At least $568 million of that has gone to former President Trump’s campaign and allied groups, compared to about $127 million to support Vice President Harris.
Between the lines: Those figures likely underestimate the true totals, given the extent to which some mega-donors choose to conceal their identity when funding political causes.
“Battle of the billionaires: the mega rich spending to swing the US election”
A small number of billionaires could help swing the result of the US presidential election, as many of the world’s wealthiest spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help their preferred candidate win.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are running neck and neck in the final days before the vote, which is on track to be the most expensive in history. The candidates and allied groups had raised more than $3.8bn by mid-October.
A Financial Times analysis of campaign finance filings found billionaires have donated at least $695mn, or about 18 per cent, of the total money raised during this election cycle. Trump is particularly dependent on US elites, with about a third of the money raised by the campaign and allied groups coming from billionaires, compared to about 6 per cent of the funds raised by Harris-aligned groups. From January 2023 to mid-October 2024, groups supporting Joe Biden and Harris outraised pro-Trump groups by $2.2bn to $1.7bn.
Overall, at least 144 people on the list of about 800 US billionaires compiled by Forbes are using their wealth to sway the 2024 election.
“Bill Gates Privately Says He Has Backed Harris With $50 Million Donation”
The Plutocrats are out in force:
After decades of sitting on the sidelines of politics, Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, has said privately that he recently donated about $50 million to a nonprofit organization that is supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential run, according to three people briefed on the matter.
The donation was meant to stay under wraps. Mr. Gates, one of the founders of Microsoft, has not publicly endorsed Ms. Harris, and his donation would represent a significant change in the strategy that has previously kept him away from gifts like this.
“Big Money Flowed to Pro-Trump Groups in the Past Three Months; Three people — Elon Musk, Miriam Adelson and Dick Uihlein — put a combined $220 million into groups supporting Donald J. Trump in July, August and September.”
My new one at MSNBC Opinion: “Two big questions raised by Elon Musk’s Trumpian transformation of X; Even if the worst does not come to pass, Musk is already hastening truth decay.”
I have written this opinion column for MSNBC Opinion. It begins:
Conservatives were rightly outraged when social media platforms including Twitter removed links to a New York Post story run weeks before the 2020 elections detailing embarrassing information contained on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Twitter executives later admitted it was a mistake, an overreaction to the platform’s handling of tweets linking to 2016 Democratic National Committee documents hacked by the Russian government.
But if the removal of the Hunter Biden content was problematic because of its potential impact on the 2020 election, how should we feel about Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter) using his platform to give unremitting support to Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy via at times misleading and incendiary election content pushed to millions of users’ feeds daily?
A new deep dive by The New York Times last week described Musk as “the richest man in the world [who] has involved himself in the U.S. election in a manner unparalleled in modern history.” Indeed, even as Musk railed about social media’s Hunter Biden censorship, the Times alleges X worked with Trump’s campaign to stifle a potentially embarrassing Trump story: “After a reporter’s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month, the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account.” (Musk did not return a request for comment on the Times’ reporting.)
Meanwhile, what to make of Musk’s recent post stating, “Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!” Musk went on to make a wholly unsubstantiated claim that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris plan to turn millions of noncitizens in the U.S. into voters who will inevitably vote for Democrats.
This, on top of Musk’s commandeering of the @america handle for his super PAC, the millions of dollars he has pledged to a pro-Trump super PAC, and his personal appearances on the campaign trail for Trump. Plus his efforts to gather voter registration information for his super PAC by offering $47 for every referral that results in a petition signature. (The petition pledges support for the First and Second Amendments.)
Musk’s transformation of Twitter to X helps us think clearly about two issues that have been percolating about social media platforms: Should government regulations police speech on platforms for political bias? And what should social media companies do about election-related disinformation?….
Perhaps our greatest fear should be the impact of Musk inflaming the passions of those who already believe false narratives. How will the public react, and what will those who certify elections try to do, if Trump and Musk fan the flames of voter denial after voters have cast their ballots in November?…
“Musk is Going All in to Elect Trump”
In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, the richest man in the world has involved himself in the U.S. election in a manner unparalleled in modern history.
Elon Musk, seen over the weekend jumping for joy alongside former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Butler, Pa., is now talking to the Republican candidate multiple times a week.
He has effectively moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania, the place that he has recently told confidants he believes is the linchpin to Mr. Trump’s re-election.
He has relentlessly promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy to his 201 million followers on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter that he bought for $44 billion and has used to spread conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party and to insult its candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Above all, he is personally steering the actions of a super PAC that he has funded with tens of millions of dollars to turn out the vote for Mr. Trump, not just in Pennsylvania but across the country. He has even proposed taking a campaign bus tour across Pennsylvania and knocking on doors himself, in part to see how his money is being used.
Taken together, a clear picture has emerged of Mr. Musk’s battle plan as he directs his efforts to elect Mr. Trump with the same frenetic energy and exacting demands that he has honed at his companies SpaceX, Tesla and X….
It may be impossible to capture the financial value of all the support Mr. Musk is providing to Mr. Trump. This is in part because of his role on X, where he amplifies so much of the former president’s message. Mr. Trump has privately used grand — and unverified — terms to describe what Mr. Musk is donating to the super PAC, telling one associate recently that the figure is $500 million.
But friends and colleagues say Mr. Musk is adopting the same strategy that he has used during other crises he has considered existential. Just as Mr. Musk worked late into the night as his companies teetered on the verge of catastrophe, tinkering with rocket designs at SpaceX, sleeping on a couch in the Tesla factory or making staff cuts at Twitter, Mr. Musk has deemed this an all-hands-on-deck moment.
And so, just as he recruited friends, family and trusted lieutenants to Twitter after he bought the company, Mr. Musk has done the same at America PAC, which he founded to help Mr. Trump. Most recently, Mr. Musk added Steve Davis, a former SpaceX engineer and the head of his tunneling company, to the group, with Mr. Davis reprising a sidekick role that he played after Mr. Musk’s takeover of Twitter.
Ensconced in a war room in Pittsburgh with a team of lawyers, public-relations professionals, canvassing experts and longtime friends, Mr. Musk is trying to apply strategies and entrepreneurial lessons from his businesses to a grind-it-out political mission with just weeks to go until Election Day. This article is based on interviews with 17 people familiar with Mr. Musk’s thinking and operations as Election Day approaches….
“Timothy Mellon, Secretive Donor, Gives $50 Million to Pro-Trump Group”
Timothy Mellon, a reclusive heir to a Gilded Age fortune, donated $50 million to a super PAC supporting Donald J. Trump the day after the former president was convicted of 34 felonies, according to new federal filings, an enormous gift that is among the largest single disclosed contributions ever.
The donation’s impact on the 2024 race is expected to be felt almost immediately. Within days of the contribution, the pro-Trump super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., said in a memo that it would begin reserving $100 million in advertising through Labor Day.
The group had only $34.5 million on hand at the end of April, and Mr. Mellon’s contribution accounted for much of the nearly $70 million that the super PAC raised in May. On Wednesday and Thursday, the super PAC began reserving $30 million in ads to air in Georgia and Pennsylvania around the Fourth of July holiday.
Mr. Mellon is now the first donor to give $100 million in disclosed federal contributions in this year’s election. He was already the single largest contributor to super PACs supporting both Mr. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent. Mr. Mellon has previously given $25 million to both.