The NPR Politics Podcast - Elon Musk Is A Donald Trump Mega-Donor

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

Elon Musk has gone all in on Trump and put $75 million into a super PAC he created to support the candidate. He's also assisting with get-out-the-vote operations, including offering multiple giveaways of a million dollars to registered voters in key states who sign a petition. This may or may not be legal.This episode: national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, political correspondent Susan Davis, and disinformation correspondent Shannon Bond.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. Hi, this is Rebecca in Oklahoma. I am headed to my county election board where we will be processing ballots today for the 2024 election. This podcast was recorded at 107 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, October 24th, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we will probably still

have more ballots to process. Okay, here's the show. Thank you for your service. Busy time of year for them. Yeah. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. I'm Susan Davis.

I cover politics. And NPR's Shannon Bond is here with us. Hello. Hi, Sarah. Hi, Sue. So today on the show, Elon Musk and his role in Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Musk has put $75 million into his own super PAC supporting the former president, and he's been traveling Pennsylvania talking to voters in that critical swing state.

Now, Sue, you've been in Pennsylvania recently. This is one of Trump's largest donors. Just put this in perspective for us. Well, $75 million is a lot of money to mere mortals like you and me, Sarah. But for Elon Musk, I mean, it's just a tiny fraction of his estimated fortune. I think it's estimated somewhere around $240 billion. So yes, it's a lot, but not to him. What is fascinating in part about Elon Musk is, you know,

there's a lot of big money donors in politics. That's not new. But he sort of has gone from not much engagement to extremely high levels of engagement, especially in the presidential process. He'd been fairly apolitical for most of his business life, but he has gone all in for Donald Trump. He's appeared at campaign rallies for him. He started his first ever super PAC, America PAC, which you noted, which has raised at least 75 million for Donald Trump and also helping out down ballot House Republicans and key races that will determine the majority there. And he's doing a lot of provocative things, which I know we'll get into more detail later. But he obviously has a huge social media platform in which he is very

aggressively campaigning and messaging in favor of Donald Trump. And Shannon, this is, I mean, this is part of a larger project for Musk, right? That you could sort of trace back at least to when he bought Twitter and, of course, renamed it X. How has Musk's purchase of X changed the platform and how is he using it now? Yeah, I mean, he was very much politically motivated, I think we can say at this point, in making that purchase of X where where he talked about it being about bringing back free speech. He felt like the former leadership of Twitter were too liberal

and too censorious of people's views. Of course, many of the changes Musk has made have actually not necessarily made more free speech on the platform, but have certainly, I think it's fair to say, amplified conservative voices. He's welcomed back people, including Trump himself, who had been banned from Twitter, as well as a whole host of other folks banned, people like Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist, Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist. And it's really sort of changed the tenor of the platform.

And Musk himself, I think, has actually changed the tenor of the platform. I mean, he's really remade the social media company kind of in his own image. I mean, he is the most followed person on there. He has over 200 million followers. You know, it's been reported that he even had his engineers tweak X's algorithm to show his posts more prominently. And at this point, it's actually quite hard to really know how much he has changed things at X. They have made it much more difficult for researchers to study the platform. They've cut off access to the back-end data. They've made it quite

expensive. So there's just a lot less transparency into how content travels on the platform and what kind of things might be getting boosted. I wonder what else you can tell us about what Musk's America PAC is doing for the campaign. Yeah, so they have actually taken on like a really big role in get out the vote operations. You know, the rules have changed to allow campaigns to coordinate more closely with groups like Super PACs on get out the vote efforts. And so essentially, the Trump campaign has outsourced a lot of their get out the vote to America PACs.

So they're spending a lot of money doing canvassing. He is also putting money into some down ballot Republican congressional races. $75 million is not a lot for Elon Musk, but it's a lot of money in politics. And he really does seem to be focusing on some of these really important races that may determine the future direction of the country. And the PAC is also offering people the chance to win a million dollars if they sign this petition in support of the First and Second Amendment, and also offering them money if they get friends to sign this petition.

And this is all only open to registered voters. So really inserting himself in the race in a way that it's not the sort of thing we typically see from major donors. All right, let's take a quick break. We'll talk more in just a moment. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies.

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And we're back. You know, there's one thing I want to talk about a little bit more, and that is the sweepstakes that we mentioned that Musk is doing. What's going on exactly with that? So this is complicated because it's obviously not something that happens in typical campaigns. But earlier this month, Elon Musk started promoting small dollar giveaways and Musk has been offering $47, 47 being the number of president that Donald Trump would be to any person who gets a registered voter in a swing state to sign a petition that basically just says they support the First and Second Amendment. And recently he's actually upped the ante quite a bit. I have a surprise for you, which is that we're going to be awarding a million dollars to

randomly to people who have signed the petition every day from now until the election. Yeah. And so he's actually already, you know, given away four of these prizes to folks both in Pennsylvania and in North Carolina. Cause as we said, you know, these are only eligible for registered voters in these swing states. It is very clear in federal law that you cannot give people anything of financial value

in exchange for their vote. So what he's doing here, I'd say at a minimum, raises some legal questions. So I put's doing here, I'd say at a minimum, raises some legal questions. So I put this question to a campaign finance expert. I spoke to Erin Klopak. She's a lawyer and the senior director at the Campaign Legal Center, which is a nonpartisan watchdog group. People are supposed to be voting to exercise their voice and their preference in our democracy, and it's not something that we permit payments to facilitate. And so the law is quite clear that it is illegal to pay people to vote, and that includes paying

people to register to vote. And this sweepstakes seems to fairly clearly be exactly that. But Sarah, it would not be Washington, it would not be politics if you couldn't find other lawyers to say, no, this was perfectly fine. And I would note that the Federalist Society, which is a very well-known conservative legal organization, wrote an extensive blog post this week defending what Musk is doing, saying that they believe it absolutely is legal because of this workaround of the petition, that the ask is to sign a petition, the ask is not to register to vote explicitly, and it's not to vote explicitly.

You can quibble about this. Lawyers will quibble about it. But as I said, what he's doing is at least raising questions over whether a super PAC or anyone can do something like this. Well, there's some questions from government officials too, right? Yes. And Clopac cited this when I spoke to her. There are media reports that the Justice Department sent Elon Musk's PAC a warning letter about the sweepstakes. NPR has not confirmed that. Musk's PAC hasn't responded to requests to comments and the DOJ hasn't commented either, but it would suggest that this is at least on law enforcement's radar. The other thing I would say about it is don't expect an easier, fast resolution to this

question. Campaign finance and voting law cases tend to take a very long time to resolve, and with the election less than two weeks away, we're not going to have a final answer on that. You know, I have to wonder if after all these inquiries and questions are asked, if this ultimately does pass muster, will this be the beginning of a new of a new trend, a new technique to get people to vote, get people to sign up? You know, how will things change going forward? Look, connect all these dots together. If you think about what Shannon's saying about how much power Elon Musk has in amplifying

a message through X and how much power he has with his money and how essentially it highlights that if you are a person of means in America, there is virtually no limit to how much money you can pump into the political system. And Klobac put it this way, that in Musk's involvement in this campaign, sort of highlights the way the system works. It is literally the perfect illustration from sort of start to finish

of everything that's wrong with our system, right? You have the richest person in the world who has resources that are so dramatically disproportionate than any ordinary American and has this pulpit and opportunity to amplify his own voice on a level that no other person possibly could. And then the resources to directly support and underwrite the expenses of the candidate, Helix. And then, you know, you see the consequences of that, of having the opportunity potentially to even have power himself if he succeeds in getting his

preferred candidate elected. And I mean, if that's not, you know, the opposite of a representative democracy, I don't know what is. And look, she raises a point we haven't yet discussed. It's that Donald Trump is also openly campaigning, saying if he wins this election, he's going to give Elon Musk a position in his cabinet. So Musk also has a unique stake in the outcome of the election in that regard. It kind of raises the question, what does Musk get out of this? What does he want here? This job that Trump has been talking about is actually something that Musk himself pitched to Trump when he interviewed him back in August on X. And it's this idea that he would run this sort of government efficiency office that

would look at the way agency spending works. And what's really quite striking here is that Musk himself, he runs Tesla, he runs SpaceX. These are actually major government contractors, right? And so this could end up with Musk in the sort of position where he would be in some ways financially overseeing these regulatory agencies, which regulate his companies, and which he has complained a lot about and actually, you know, even gotten in legal battles with over their attempts to rein him in. The other thing I would say just to the straight politics of Elon Musk in this election, we've

talked a lot on the podcast about surrogates and people who try to validate for the candidate and who they're signifying to voters. And obviously, we've heard a lot from voters saying the economy is the number one issue. And you can make the case that having the wealthiest man in the world who's running successful sort of forward-leaning companies out there campaigning for Donald Trump sort of hits home that point that if you want a stronger economy Donald Trump's the guy look all these successful businessmen are supporting his campaign And I think he's also someone who's uniquely popular among young men He's sort of a iconic figure for a lot of young men and what he's been able to do through his private companies

So I think Elon Musk can also be a powerful Validator for people who have economy at the front of mind thinking like if he's with Trump, I should be with Trump too. We should note, you know, Mark Cuban, another billionaire, has been out stumping for Vice President Harris. So billionaires don't seem to be going anywhere when it comes to American politics. Look, there's a truth about American politics now that you can barely make a run for president if you don't have at least one billionaire on your side. Or maybe a few.

Or maybe a few. All right, let's leave it there for today. Shannon Bond, thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me. I'm Sarah McCammon, I cover the campaign. And I'm Susan Davis, I cover politics. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Who's claiming power this election? What's happening in battleground states? And why

do we still have the Electoral College? All this month, the Throughline Podcast is asking big questions about our democracy and going back in time to answer them. Listen now to the Throughline Podcast from NPR. On the Code Switch podcast, we think about race and identity all the time. On a recent episode, we tried to make sense of the devastating violence in Gaza by turning to James Baldwin, the writer and intellectual who thought a lot about what was happening in Israel during his lifetime. His words speak to the present in unexpected ways. Hear how they might help you think through it too on the Code Switch Podcast only from NPR.