After years of drifting toward the political right, the billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX is throwing his fortune behind a pro-Trump super PAC and has inundated X, which he purchased in 2022, with content criticizing Democrats and Vice President Harris.
“The big difference [between Musk and other wealthy donors] is that he is himself a sort of Trump-esque figure,” Sarah Bryner, director of research and strategy at OpenSecrets, told The Hill.
“He’s a very public person. Whereas most of the people we see contributing to politicians are not household names, Elon Musk is,” Bryner continued. “So that is this combination of celebrity and wealth that is a little bit unusual.”
Musk officially endorsed Trump after the former president was injured in an assassination attempt last month.
While the billionaire had long been posting and interacting with right-leaning content on X, which was known as Twitter until he bought and renamed it, he had previously refrained from supporting a particular candidate in the presidential race.
Following the endorsement, Musk began frequently posting content that embraced the former president.
Musk hosted Trump on X’s live audio feature for a roughly two-hour conversation Monday, covering everything from the assassination attempt to the former president’s views on immigration and the economy.
The billionaire has also increasingly shared content disparaging Harris since President Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed his vice president, who has secured the Democratic nomination ahead of next week’s convention in Chicago.
Musk faced backlash late last month after he shared a mock campaign ad that used an artificial intelligence voice mimicking Harris to spew insults about her campaign and Biden — a move that seemingly violated his platform’s own policies.
His ownership of X has worried some Democrats, as several pro-Harris accounts on the platform have been suspended or labeled as spam in recent weeks.
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
