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Elon Musk officially weighs in on race, tossing cash at Trump PAC

The far-right billionaire donated an unknown sum to America PAC, a Trump-aligned group propped up by deep pockets

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Elon Musk attends 'Exploring the New Frontiers of Innovation: Mark Read in Conversation with Elon Musk' session during the Cannes Lions International Festival Of Creativity 2024 - Day Three on June 19, 2024, in Cannes, France. (Marc Piasecki/Getty Images)
Elon Musk attends 'Exploring the New Frontiers of Innovation: Mark Read in Conversation with Elon Musk' session during the Cannes Lions International Festival Of Creativity 2024 - Day Three on June 19, 2024, in Cannes, France. (Marc Piasecki/Getty Images)

Elon Musk has donated to a Trump campaign-affiliated PAC, tossing cash behind a candidate for the first time in the race, per Bloomberg.

People familiar with the donation didn’t disclose the amount, but according to Bloomberg, they described it as a “sizeable sum.”

Musk, with a net worth of far over $200 billion, has dove headfirst into far-right conspiracy and fascist-adjacent ideology in recent years, pushing strains of the Great Replacement Theory and other anti-immigrant and antisemitic rhetoric on X, formerly Twitter, the platform that he purchased in 2022.

The Trump campaign, which has closed a fundraising gap versus Joe Biden’s re-election bid largely thanks to the ultra-wealthy pouring cash in, is also seeing support from a network of shadowy PACs like America PAC, which have softer rules on disclosures for donations from the wealthy.

A July 15 deadline will force America PAC to release a list of donors, though disclosure frequency and amounts are not required.

Trump, who previously blasted Musk as a "bulls**t artist," has softened his tune on the Tesla executive in recent months, hoping to court a campaign contribution.

As Trump mulls Musk for an advisory role in a future administration, the X executive and far-right commentator hopes to maintain his ties with the federal government, which provides lucrative contracts for his SpaceX company.

Musk, who made a March visit to Mar-a-Lago, then proclaiming that he didn’t expect to finance either candidate, has been a vocal critic of the Biden administration and its plans to raise taxes on billionaires. Meanwhile, Democratic ultrawealthy donors have all but staged a coup to remove Biden from the party’s ticket.

By Griffin Eckstein

Griffin Eckstein is a News Fellow at Salon. He is a student journalist at New York University, having previously written for the independent student paper Washington Square News, the New York Post, and Morning Brew. Follow him on Bluesky at gec.bsky.social.


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