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His zealous efforts to assist Donald Trump get elected might form the race.Michael Swensen / GettyOctober 24, 2024, 7:25 PM ET That is an version of The Atlantic Each day, a publication that guides you thru the largest tales of the day, helps you uncover new concepts, and recommends one of the best in tradition. Join it right here.Over the previous three months, Elon Musk has mobilized his many sources—his distinctive wealth, far-reaching on-line platform, and time—for a trigger that might have profound results on his private fortune and American society: electing Donald Trump.Musk goes all in: Along with donating $75 million to America PAC, a gaggle he based that backs Trump, he has additionally briefly relocated to the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania to successfully run Trump’s get-out-the-vote technique from a struggle room he arrange in Pittsburgh. He has stumped on the path, internet hosting a Trump city corridor within the auditorium of a Pennsylvania highschool final week and telling locals to go “hog wild” on voter registration. And, in his newest stunt, he has supplied $1 million a day to registered voters in swing states who signal an America PAC petition backing the First and Second Amendments—a transfer that the Justice Division reportedly stated may be breaking election legal guidelines. His efforts might show consequential: As my colleague Franklin Foer wrote this previous weekend, “If Trump wins, it's going to possible be by a slender margin that may be attributed to turnout. Musk can tout himself as the one variable of success.”Musk is much from the one main donor on this race. Invoice Gates has reportedly given $50 million to Vice President Kamala Harris’s marketing campaign, and numerous billionaires publicly help Harris or Trump. What distinguishes Musk although, past his on-the-ground efforts, is his possession of X....
His zealous efforts to assist Donald Trump get elected might form the race.
Michael Swensen / Getty
That is an version of The Atlantic Each day, a publication that guides you thru the largest tales of the day, helps you uncover new concepts, and recommends one of the best in tradition. Join it right here.
Over the previous three months, Elon Musk has mobilized his many sources—his distinctive wealth, far-reaching on-line platform, and time—for a trigger that might have profound results on his private fortune and American society: electing Donald Trump.
Musk goes all in: Along with donating $75 million to America PAC, a gaggle he based that backs Trump, he has additionally briefly relocated to the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania to successfully run Trump’s get-out-the-vote technique from a struggle room he arrange in Pittsburgh. He has stumped on the path, internet hosting a Trump city corridor within the auditorium of a Pennsylvania highschool final week and telling locals to go “hog wild” on voter registration. And, in his newest stunt, he has supplied $1 million a day to registered voters in swing states who signal an America PAC petition backing the First and Second Amendments—a transfer that the Justice Division reportedly stated may be breaking election legal guidelines. His efforts might show consequential: As my colleague Franklin Foer wrote this previous weekend, “If Trump wins, it’s going to possible be by a slender margin that may be attributed to turnout. Musk can tout himself as the one variable of success.”
Musk is much from the one main donor on this race. Invoice Gates has reportedly given $50 million to Vice President Kamala Harris’s marketing campaign, and numerous billionaires publicly help Harris or Trump. What distinguishes Musk although, past his on-the-ground efforts, is his possession of X. He can unfold data (and disinformation) with ease, and stifle views he doesn’t like, Sophia Rosenfeld, a historian on the College of Pennsylvania, informed me in an e-mail. Media house owners have all the time been influential in American politics (Rupert Murdoch, for instance, performed a distinguished function in previous elections via his management of Fox Information). However Rosenfeld famous that Musk’s specific mixture of wealth and media management is “unprecedented.”
Musk’s viewers is very large on X: His posts, a lot of which have amplified false and inflammatory rhetoric, get billions of views. Over the weekend he boosted the baseless declare that Michigan had extra registered voters than eligible residents. After Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson stated that wasn’t true—and that Musk was spreading “harmful disinformation”—Musk doubled down and accused her of mendacity to the general public. This disinformation had a swift real-world affect: Benson informed CBS that her staff acquired harassing messages and threats after Musk’s put up. Such rhetoric has the potential to warp how a lot voters belief election processes. Musk’s America PAC has additionally been urgingfolks to report examples of “voter fraud” via what it calls the Election Integrity Group on X. Although such fraud stays exceptionally uncommon, his efforts might additional sow mistrust in election integrity and lay the groundwork for future claims of a stolen race. (America PAC didn’t instantly reply to my request for remark.) So distinguished is Musk’s function within the MAGA motion that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz joked archly at a current rally: “I’m going to speak about [Trump’s] working mate …. Elon Musk.”
Musk wasn’t all the time aligned, not less than in public, with such zealotry. He reportedly stated that Trump was a “stone-cold loser” in 2020, and he supported Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Nonetheless, as my colleague Charlie Warzel informed me final month, Musk’s emotions of being aggrieved and attacked escalated when he confronted pushback from liberals after his Twitter takeover; quickly after, he started utilizing X as a megaphone for MAGA. And, although his Trump endorsement appeared out of step along with his long-standing picture as a local weather innovator, it’s constant along with his rightward drift: Over the previous few years, he has reportedly been quietly donating to Republican causes and candidates, together with giving $10 million to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis final yr for his ill-fated main run.
The rich have lengthy performed an outsize function in politics—however Musk, as he so usually does, is venturing to new extremes. If Trump wins, Musk’s gamble might repay handsomely: Along with a promised function in Trump’s authorities, he’s poised to obtain epic authorities contracts for his firms. However even when Trump doesn’t win, Musk might set a precedent for uber-rich donors getting extra instantly concerned with political campaigns; that might intensify the “oligarchic aspect of recent American democracy,” Rosenfeld warned. Although Musk’s hands-on, incendiary campaigning strategies are chaotic—and presumably unlawful—his efforts throughout this election might pioneer a mannequin for different megadonors seeking to reshape a race.
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Illustration by Paul Spella / The Atlantic. Supply: Getty.
Ratpocalypse Now
By Annie Lowrey
Has any man in historical past talked about “how a lot he hates rats” greater than New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams? Adams himself posed that query on the metropolis’s inaugural Nationwide City Rat Summit final month. “Let’s work out how we unify in opposition to public enemy primary: Mickey and his crew.”
Mickey is, canonically, a mouse. However Adams’s marketing campaign in opposition to the town’s endemic brown-rat inhabitants may be the simplest and highest-profile initiative of his scandal-ridden mayoralty.
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