How Elon Musk, world's richest man, helping Donald Trump’s presidential campaign

Former US President Donald Trump has the world’s wealthiest man on his side. Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, clearly states in his bio on the platform that he is backing Trump in the upcoming US Presidential Elections.

Musk has repeatedly used the social media platform, along with his enormous wealth, to boost the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign as he seeks reelection.

The 53-year-old Tesla CEO, who previously claimed to have voted for Democratic candidates, has become increasingly aligned with right-leaning views during this election. He endorsed Trump in July and made a joint appearance with him in Pennsylvania this month.

This strategy is different from the typical approach of corporate CEOs, who are more known for hosting exclusive, high-cost fundraising events or gathering potential donors at luxurious properties in the Hamptons.

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What’s in it for Musk?

If re-elected, Trump has vowed to appoint Elon Musk as the head of a government efficiency commission, a role Musk believes will help eliminate regulations he considers harmful to the economy and obstructive to business operations.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, holds millions of dollars in government contracts. His companies are also subject to strict and often costly government regulations related to consumer and environmental protections.

Despite years of stating that he would not back either presidential candidate, including as recently as March, Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump in July 2024. This endorsement came soon after the assassination attempt on Trump.

He stated that Trump’s victory was crucial “to preserve democracy” and recommended Ohio Senator JD Vance as a potential running mate. Vance was later chosen as the Vice-Presidential candidate.

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Let’s take a look at some of the ways Musk is supporting Trump:

America PAC

Musk’s pro-Trump spending group America PAC is playing a major role in helping mobilise and register voters in battleground states that could decide the election. Musk, ranked by Forbes as the world’s richest person, has so far supplied at least $75 million to the political action committee, according to federal disclosures.

America PAC spent around $72 million of that total in the July-September period, according to disclosures filed to the Federal Election Commission. That is more than any other pro-Trump super PAC focused on turning out voters.

However, America PAC is struggling in some battleground states to meet door-knocking goals and is investigating claims that some canvassers lied about the number of voters they have contacted, Reuters reported last week.

X social media platform

Elon Musk has over 202 million followers on the X social media platform, which he bought for $44 billion in October 2022, when it was called Twitter. Since endorsing Donald Trump, he has used the platform to promote the Republican candidate. Some of his posts spread misinformation and sow doubt about the integrity of the upcoming election.

In July, for example, he commented on a post from Republican House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, writing: “The goal all along has been to import as many illegal voters as possible,” repeating the false claim that the Democrats are intentionally allowing non-citizens into the country so that they can vote in the election.

The same month, he posted a video, generated with artificial intelligence and manipulating Vice President Kamala Harris’ voice, in which Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, described herself as the “ultimate diversity hire” and criticised President Joe Biden.

Notably, Musk has been critical of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes meant to boost racial and ethnic representation at workplaces, posting in January, for example, that “DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone who uses it.”

X and other social media platforms have been under greater scrutiny since 2016 when Russia interfered in the US presidential election to try to boost Trump’s candidacy and harm his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Since Musk acquired then-Twitter in 2022, civil rights groups have raised concerns over a rise in hate speech and misinformation due to reduced content moderation.

Under X’s current policy, the platform may “label posts containing misleading media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context” or remove misleading posts that have a serious risk of harm.

However, researchers say it continues to be a source of election misinformation, through fake accounts and Musk’s own amplification of that content.

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$1 million giveaways

Elon Musk is also promising to give $1 million each day to randomly selected people who sign his online petition pledging to support the First and Second Amendments of the US Constitution, which protect the rights to free speech and gun ownership.

The petition is only open to signatories who are registered voters in seven battleground states likely to decide the presidential election.

The petition falls into a grey area of election law, and legal experts are divided about whether Musk could be running afoul of prohibitions on paying people to register to vote. Critics say that it is a ploy to help drum up support for Trump.

America PAC has been publishing promotional video interviews and photos of people who have won the $1 million giveaways on Musk’s X, where they garner millions of views. Petition signers need to provide their address and mobile phone number, indicating that they could then be contacted by America PAC door-knockers.

Campaigns and tours

Elon Musk joined Donald Trump during an October 5 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the scene of a July assassination attempt against the Republican candidate, and returned to the state for more campaign stops less than two weeks later.

While touring in Pennsylvania, Musk made a string of false claims about election fraud, some of them similar to those made by Trump over the last four years. He also encouraged people to use his X platform to shine a spotlight on potential election cheating.

“If people think there’s a fraud, then they should post the images, post the videos, post the evidence," he said.

With inputs from Reuters