The Elon Musk Effect: How Donald Trump Got Billionaire Support | US election 2024

On By Littum

As Donald Trump declared his “magnificent victory” as the results of the US presidential election trickled in, he reserved special praise for a man who has helped catapult him back into the country’s top job.

“A star is born, Elon,” he said in a speech in West Palm Beach, Florida, referring to his biggest ally in the race to become president: the billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk.

Indeed, Musk has played a major role in Trump’s comeback, not only pumping millions of dollars into Trump’s campaign, but also serving as a political advisor and promoter, effectively turning his X social media platform into a Make America Great Again ( MAGA) mouthpiece.

“The future is going to be amazing,” Musk wrote on X when it became clear that Trump would return to the White House.

Indeed, the billionaire’s star could rise high under Trump, who previously suggested his ally could become the “secretary of cost-cutting” in his cabinet. Experts have warned that Musk, whose Space X already has clout as a major government defense contractor, could end up “regulating the regulators.”

As the dust settles, here’s everything you need to know about how the world’s richest man helped pull off one of the wildest political comebacks in history. How did Musk leverage his money and influence to get Trump back on top, and why?

How much did Musk donate to Trump’s campaign?

To be clear, billionaires played a bigger role than ever in both the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns. Bill Gates of Microsoft and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg both endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. But it was Musk’s multifaceted support for Trump that really made the difference.

Musk donated an estimated $132 million to Trump and other Republicans leading up to the 2024 election, according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) last month in its final disclosures before Election Day.

Two of the largest donations—$43.6 million and $75 million—went directly into the Trump campaign machine, specifically the America PAC (political action committee) that Musk had created himself.

Controversially, Musk launched a cash giveaway in key swing states offering registered voters who agreed to sign a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments to the US Constitution, which respectively protect free speech and the right to keep and bear weapons, the opportunity to win $1 million day.

“We’re going to randomly give away $1 million to people who signed the petition every day from now until the election,” Musk said at an Oct. 19 campaign event.

The move was challenged in a Pennsylvania court after the US Justice Department warned the group could violate election laws that prohibit paying people to register to vote. However, judges ruled on Monday that the operation could go ahead after Musk’s lawyers argued that the winners were vetted spokespeople and not randomly selected.

Now, Musk is being sued in a class action lawsuit by voters who claim he convinced them to sign the petition under false pretenses that they had a chance to win $1 million. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by Arizona resident Jacqueline McAferty, who also accused Musk of using the giveaway to collect valuable personal data and drive traffic to X.

FEC filings also showed that Musk gave $10 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a PAC with a mandate to “protect and expand the Republican Senate majority,” potentially helping Republicans take back control of the Senate in this election.

Musk also reportedly made other unreported donations to Republicans.

How was X implemented as a MAGA mouthpiece?

Although it may seem strange now, Elon Musk was once perceived as a liberal and a champion of renewable energy who claimed to have voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. This image has changed since 2022, after his takeover of the social media platform Twitter , now renamed X.

After promising to make Twitter a “politically neutral” forum, Musk fired employees responsible for monitoring disinformation. He also reinstated more than 62,000 suspended accounts, including white nationalist and neo-Nazi accounts accused of spreading hate speech and conspiracy theories.

Crucially, he also reversed the ban on Trump’s account, which the platform shut down after the attack on the US capital in January 2021, which many claim Trump encouraged.

When the election rolled around, critics said that X had effectively become an unofficial house platform for the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. The owner himself was accused of “fanboying” Trump and spreading misinformation among his 200 million followers, his influence amplified by X’s algorithm.

One example was the promotion of a doctored video of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who had a fake voiceover saying, “I was chosen because I am the ultimate diversity hire.” Musk reposted the video in July with the words “this is awesome” and a laughing emoji, garnering 136 million more views for an item that wasn’t flagged as a parody.

Misinformation about “illegal alien” voting in the election also circulated on the X. This despite studies by both conservative and left-wing organizations showing that the incidence of the offense, which carries penalties of up to a year in prison, fines and potential deportation, was insignificant.

A conspiracy theory that the Democrats were importing illegal immigrants and giving them amnesty to expand their voter base in future elections was also allowed to circulate on X and reinforced by Musk himself. “Them. America would then become a one-party, deep-blue socialist state,” he said in a post in October.

After Trump’s televised debate against Harris in September, in which he repeated the false claim that Haitian immigrants in an Ohio town ate cats and dogs, Musk reproduced a meme of a cat holding a sign that read “Kamala hates me” with a laughing emoji.

Despite his stated commitment to free speech, Musk has suppressed some news stories, such as an article by journalist Ken Klippenstein that detailed Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s weaknesses, reportedly gleaned from leaked documents. While the journalist’s account was later restored, links to the article were blocked.

A Pew Research Center survey in March of this year confirmed the platform’s growing popularity among Republican supporters, showing that 53 percent believed it was “good for democracy,” about three times the 17 percent who answered the same in 2021 .

Why has Musk allied himself with Trump?

A strong fusion of their fan bases left the alliance between Trump and Musk.

Not so long ago, there was no love lost between the pair. In 2022, Trump called Musk a “bulls**t artist” for allegedly lying about endorsing him in the 2016 election. Musk responded on Twitter at the time, saying it was “time for Trump to hang up his hat and sail into the sunset”.

Fast forward two years, and the tech tycoon was standing side by side with Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, wearing a black MAGA hat.

Elon Musk is one of Trump's main supporters
Elon Musk, pictured at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, has become one of Trump’s key supporters (File: Evan Vucci/AP Photo)

Musk’s move to the right is sometimes attributed to the government-mandated shutdown of his Tesla facility during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, he reopened a factory in Fremont, California, and declared that he was ready to be arrested, taking a stand against the “bureaucratic blob”.

His shift to the right has since become manifest in his relationship with anti-regulation leaders such as Argentine President Javier Milei. Musk has also become close to international right-wing leaders such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, India’s Narendra Modi and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

However, a number of American media, such as Vanity Fair and the Washington Post, have pointed to a deeper motivation, triggered by the decision of one of his children to come out as transgender in 2022, cut ties with Musk and change their last name to Wilson. Musk claimed in an interview with Jordan Peterson that he had been “tricked” into signing on to their medical treatment, and announced his crusade against the “woke mind virus”.

In 2021, Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters from Palo Alto, California, in Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, and similarly changed his residence from California to Texas. In July of this year, Musk said he would move SpaceX and X from California to Texas over a law that prohibits schools from forcing teachers to notify parents when their child changes their gender identity.

How has Musk helped Trump reach young men?

Observers say Musk and Trump, who both present themselves as rule-breaking, non-mainstream “alpha males,” appear to have tapped into a widespread sense of male frustration in America, stemming in part from the #MeToo movement and the feminist backlash against “toxic masculinity”, which has led some men to say they feel stigmatized and marginalized.

Writing in the New York Times last month, John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, called Trump’s play for the young male vote a “master class in bridge whispering.” Angling for the “bridge vote” appears to have paid off, with a recent Harvard Youth Poll revealing that 35 percent of men between the ages of 18 and 24 polled expressed support for Trump, up five percent from a 2020 survey.

It’s a sensibility that has found expression in so-called “bridge” podcasts like the Joe Rogan Experience. Rogan endorsed Trump on Monday after interviewing Musk. “The great and powerful @elonmusk. If it weren’t for him, we’d be damned. He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you will hear, and I agree with him every step of the way,” Rogan said on X.

The message clearly resonated.

Two days later, Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States.