The wealthiest man on the planet, Elon Musk, is being criticized for supporting President Donald Trump’s SAVE Act on his social media platform X.
On Saturday, when Musk wrote: “It is the end of democracy if voter ID is not passed,” former White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, Richard Painter, replied: “It is the end of democracy if billionaires decide who wins our elections.”
Note: Musk spent more than $250 million to support Trump in the 2024 election cycle, campaigned alongside Trump, and headlined some of his own campaign rallies on Trump’s behalf. Once Trump returned to the White House, Musk took the role of “special government employee” and led DOGE.
When a MAGA supporter on X asked Painter, “Soros, Gates, or just the Rich Conservative ones?”, Painter replied, “All of them.”
It is the end of democracy if billionaires decide who wins our elections. https://t.co/ZgqmWb6rYZ
— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) March 28, 2026
Note: Painter was part of the legal team representing the political watchdog organization CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), which in 2017 sued Trump for failing to sell off certain assets and place others in a blind trust and “violated a provision in the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution by receiving payments from foreign government entities.”
In 2018, Painter left the Republican Party to become a Democrat and co-wrote the book American Nero: The History of the Destruction of the Rule of Law, and Why Trump Is the Worst Offender. In 2022, he joined the Forward Party, which was founded by Bush’s former EPA Administrator and New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and former Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang.