Elon Musk Is Going All-Out To Elect Trump — And It is Extra Than Simply Cash

A number of days after Elon Musk first provided to purchase what was then referred to as Twitter and is now X, he wrote that the web site “must be politically neutral” as a way to deserve the general public’s belief — “which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.”

Two years later, with a big presidential election quick approaching, Musk has thrown neutrality out the window and spent thousands and thousands to spice up former President Donald Trump’s marketing campaign, elevating issues that he’ll use the platform to assist Trump as properly.

And if Trump loses and as soon as once more contests the election end result, Musk may wield a large social media platform weaponized to spice up conspiracy theories in regards to the November vote. X didn’t reply to HuffPost questions for this story.

Earlier this yr, Musk mentioned he wasn’t donating cash to both presidential candidate. In July, he denied a Wall Avenue Journal report that Musk mentioned he deliberate on donating “around $45 million a month” to a brilliant PAC he helped create, America PAC, that has aggressively supported Trump’s marketing campaign in key states all through the nation.

On Tuesday, nonetheless, the primary federal marketing campaign finance information had been revealed for the reason that Journal’s report – displaying Musk’s seven donations to the PAC between July 3 and Sept. 5. In complete, the information present Musk has given slightly below $75 million to the PAC.

Musk’s donations grew over time, beginning in $5 million increments in July (that means he’d given $10 million to the PAC earlier than the Journal story revealed) and culminating in a single $30 million donation on Sept. 5. The America PAC cash can be used to pay hourly wages for door-to-door canvassers, and for junk mail and ads. Along with spending closely on the presidential race and reportedly changing into a vital a part of Trump’s floor recreation, the tremendous PAC can be backing Republicans in a number of key congressional districts.

Like Musk himself, the PAC has resorted to outrageous rhetoric to spice up Trump. One America PAC advert on X refers to an undefined “they,” an obvious reference to Donald Trump’s political enemies collectively, with a narrator saying, “They tried to kick Trump off your ballot. They even tried to end his campaign and take him out for good.” Throughout that dialogue, photos of Vice President Kamala Harris after which a bloodied Trump at his first Butler, Pennsylvania, rally flash on display screen. The advert closes with the written textual content, “Vote for President Trump like your life depends on it…”

“If you sit this election out, Kamala and the crazies will win,” one other America PAC advert declares. “You will be stuck with higher costs and more illegals invading our country.”

Musk has reportedly additionally used the levers of energy at X to assist the pro-Trump PAC.

Earlier this month, Musk seized the “@America” username from a longtime consumer of the web site who prior to now had criticized each Musk and Trump, journalist Matt Binder reported. Musk had beforehand executed the identical with the “@X” account — however this time, the seizure had nothing to do with the corporate’s pursuits, Binder noticed. It was about serving to Musk’s political group assist Trump.

Now, Musk’s PAC is successfully paying for details about energized right-leaning voters in key swing states. A professional-First and Second Modification petition on the America PAC web site guarantees a $47 reward for each new referral. The supply’s high quality print says it solely applies to referrers and registered voters in seven swing states.

As HuffPost reported Tuesday, Musk has additionally funded one of the vital cynical tremendous PACs of the election cycle, Future Coalition PAC.

In areas of Michigan with massive numbers of Muslim and Arab voters, the group is working ads highlighting Harris’ assist for Israel, and sending mailers saying she “leans on Jewish husband Doug Emhoff to advise on high-level pro-Israel policies.” On the identical time, it’s additionally working adverts focused at Jewish voters in Pennsylvania with dialogue like, “Why did Harris show sympathy for college protesters who are rabidly antisemitic?”

Musk’s affect goes properly past his cash. His possession of X gives a strong platform for him to amplify sure views and reduce others.

He has amplified himself most of all: Musk is the most-followed account on X, and on high of that, in response to Musk’s personal calls for, X engineers have artificially boosted the viewers for his posts prior to now, the Platformer e-newsletter reported final yr. Meaning Musk isn’t only a energy X consumer, however a tone-setter for your entire web site.

In an August evaluation of tens of 1000’s of Musk tweets, the Wall Avenue Journal confirmed that 2024 had been an unusually prolific posting yr for Musk — and an unusually political one. In July, when Musk formally endorsed Trump’s candidacy, his posts mentioning Trump or President Joe Biden skyrocketed, the Journal confirmed.

Versus different tech CEOs, who typically hold their politics to again rooms — or to themselves — Musk has used his platform to push Trump speaking factors each day. This essentially means mendacity for Trump, who has promised Musk a authorities job if he wins.

Quite a few analyses of Musk’s posts present the sample: One evaluation of Musk’s posts from January by way of July 30 discovered that false or deceptive claims on election-related posts from him had generated 1.2 billion views. Not one of the posts had earned a “Community Note” fact-checking label, the evaluation from the Middle for Countering Digital Hate, which Musk has unsuccessfully sued prior to now, famous.

And over a five-day interval simply final month, greater than half of Musk’s posts had been centered on politics, and practically a 3rd of his posts had been “false, misleading or missing vital context,” The New York Occasions reported.

Some posts are blatant: A number of days after Biden dropped his reelection bid in July, for instance, Musk shared a faux political commercial — he didn’t acknowledge it was satire till later — that featured a realistic-sounding AI-generated Harris voice. The “Harris” voice referred to as herself “the ultimate diversity hire” and a “deep state puppet” who didn’t “know the first thing about running the country.” Final month, Musk posted an AI-generated picture of Harris sporting a hammer-and-sickle hat and a purple military-style coat, mendacity that “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one.” CNN famous the picture “appeared to violate X’s policy on manipulated content.” Nevertheless it stays unlabeled and visual on Musk’s account.

“It’s staggering hypocrisy,” one unnamed former Twitter worker instructed Wired in August, referring to Musk’s partisan habits. “Musk is smart enough to know social media is media, and it’s a way to control the narrative.” An unnamed former member of the location’s coverage staff added, “He has a very obvious political agenda.”

Then there are the day-to-day lies and propaganda.

Musk has referred to digital voting machines and mail voting as “too risky,” echoing Trump’s personal claims that these strategies are used for widespread voter fraud — although that is false, and although Musk himself has voted by mail prior to now, identical to Trump has.

And Musk has additionally repeatedly shared “Great Replacement Theory”-fashion lies that Democrats are “importing” “vast numbers” of voters, a reference to individuals who cross the border with out authorization and are allowed — pursuant to U.S. legislation – to remain within the nation as their asylum instances proceed by way of the courts. He has individually, falsely, mentioned Democrats are “fast-tracking them to citizenship.” Final month, responding to an X consumer who mentioned Democrats had been doing all the things they’ll to cheat within the swing states, Musk wrote, “absolutely.”

A few of his false posts have a staggering attain.

In April, earlier than he endorsed Trump, Musk amplified a wildly false declare that thousands and thousands of recent voters had registered with out offering proof of citizenship. Musk’s publish has been considered practically 60 million occasions, in response to X’s public-facing metrics, and the publish he amplified has thousands and thousands extra views than that. The declare was “extremely false. 2 minutes of research required,” Stephen Richer, the Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, instructed Musk.

Not solely does it take years to grow to be a citizen, prison voting by noncitizens is nearly non-existent. Extra broadly, naturalized residents should not a political monolith — as Musk himself, a Trump supporter and immigrant who turned a U.S. citizen in 2002, should know. August polling from the Nationwide Partnership for New People, which surveyed 2,678 naturalized residents who’re registered to vote, discovered that 43.3% of respondents thought-about themselves Democrats, 30.3% thought-about themselves Republicans, and 26.3% thought-about themselves independents.

Different false posts from Musk echo Trump’s marketing campaign speaking factors, together with about Haitian immigrants. Musk has even shared a projected 2024 Electoral School map shared by a well known faux information group that claimed, “according to Nate Silver,” that Trump was projected to win the Electoral School in a blowout. Silver, the election forecaster who has in actuality referred to as the race a “toss-up,” didn’t really make the map, CNN reported.

Katie Harbath, the previous public coverage director at Fb, mentioned Musk’s personal tweets have been the first approach he’s used X to assist Trump — along with the two-hour interview Musk hosted with Trump in August.

“It’s almost a little bit less about using the Twitter platform itself, and more about Musk using his own cult of personality, and his own following,” Harbath mentioned.

That comes with perils for the subsequent few weeks: Although Musk has mentioned he’ll settle for the outcomes of the election, it doesn’t appear far-fetched to fret that Musk may manipulate his platform much more in Trump’s favor within the occasion of a contested election end result, or a Trump loss that Trump refuses to simply accept.

“I don’t think Musk is going to persuade anybody to vote one way or the other,” Harbath mentioned. “But I am worried about him persuading people to shift from just being online to actually taking physical action and going somewhere,” together with for doubtlessly violent protests within the occasion of a contested election.

There’s an open query hanging over the subsequent few weeks — will Musk try to make use of X to assist Trump, or damage Harris, by altering the how political materials is displayed or promoted on the app?

From the start of his X possession, Musk has replatformed far-right accounts that had beforehand been banned, together with white supremacists and conspiracy theorists. His transfer to supply blue “verified” checkmarks on the market — and with little precise verification — when the checks had been beforehand used to designate dependable sources in media and authorities has led to a tsunami of mis- and disinformation about severe points, just like the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

Musk has forged himself as a free speech warrior — however X below his administration has really agreed to extra governmental requests to take away or prohibit sure content material than Twitter did below earlier administration, the Washington Submit reported final month. Musk’s X has additionally suspended adversarial reporters and algorithmically marginalized its company rivals.

And there are some indications he’s suspended customers for political causes.

“He’s clearly tipping the scales in this election in favor of Trump,” Mike Nellis, a political marketing consultant and Harris supporter, instructed HuffPost.

Nellis helped begin “White Dudes for Harris,” or @dudes4harris, which was briefly suspended by the X on the identical day it hosted a star-studded Zoom name that reportedly raised thousands and thousands for Harris’ presidential marketing campaign.

The said offense, which cited a “user report” for “violating our rules against evading suspension,” didn’t make sense to Nellis, who mentioned he’d by no means had any accounts suspended from the platform earlier than. He mentioned he wasn’t certain if Musk had particularly been concerned in suspending his account, however the X proprietor did snark the White Dudes for Harris fundraising name on the identical evening, saying of the actor Mark Hamill’s remarks in the course of the Zoom occasion, “his brain has been marinating in Kool-Aid for a long time.”

Then, simply days in the past, the unbiased journalist Ken Klippenstein was suspended from the platform for allegedly “violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information,” X mentioned, the results of Klippenstein publishing an inner Trump marketing campaign file of details about Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

Klippenstein argued he by no means shared any of Vance’s non-public info — he simply linked to a leaked file that included a few of it, together with a house deal with and a part of a Social Safety quantity. Klippenstein argued the marketing campaign had pulled the knowledge from publicly obtainable sources. Nonetheless, he modified out the doc embedded within the story, changing it with a model that redacted the supposed private info. Nonetheless, he remained suspended.

Klippenstein’s account was restored to X a number of days later, nonetheless — proper after The New York Occasions reported that the Trump marketing campaign had “connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform,” unnamed folks with information of the occasions instructed the paper. CNN individually reported on “a conversation with X officials about the hacked materials before Klippenstein was banned and links to his newsletter were blocked,” citing an individual accustomed to the matter.

Even now, with Klippenstein’s account restored and the supposed private info within the file redacted, customers are unable to publish a hyperlink to his file story on X. Klippenstein’s unique publish linking to the story seems to nonetheless be the one hyperlink to it on the entire web site.

In equity, Fb and different websites have additionally restricted circulation on Klippenstein’s story — however none have taken the supposed “pro-free speech” stance that Musk has claimed as his personal. Fb blocked the hyperlink for allegedly containing “hacked sources or content leaked as part of a foreign government operation to influence US elections.” (The file is believed to have been hacked by an Iranian actor.) Meta’s rationale “is not about the publication of personal information,” a spokesperson for the corporate instructed HuffPost.

The obvious X ban on posting the hyperlink to Klippenstein’s reporting stands in stark distinction to Musk’s personal said opposition to Twitter’s earlier administration’s limiting circulation of a 2020 New York Submit story about Hunter Biden’s previous laptop computer.

A number of shops have additionally famous that on the day Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Harris for the presidency, a number of X customers reported they had been unable to comply with the Harris marketing campaign account — with a message telling them “You are unable to follow more people at this time.” Home Judiciary Committee Rating Member Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) referred to the glitches as “apparent censorship.” It’s attainable this was an instance of an harmless error, attributable to the sudden spike within the Harris account’s followers.

Harbath warned typically towards assigning political motivations to Musk the place easy technical glitches may clarify varied incidents. However she additionally identified that the general public merely doesn’t know if Musk has weighed in on varied suspensions or promoted sure ideological materials — or whether or not he would possibly try this within the days earlier than or after Election Day.

“We just don’t know what changes he’s asked X to make,” she mentioned, noting the partitions Musk constructed round Twitter’s API, which was beforehand simply accessible to researchers wanting into how X works. “There’s no way to actually independently verify what he is or is not doing with the platform in order to help Trump.”