World’s richest man and world’s most famous MAGA supporter Elon Musk contributed enormously to President-elect Donald Trump‘s late campaign surge, appearing with Trump at rallies, MAGA-juicing the rules governing his X social media platform, and delivering hundreds of millions of real dollars, too.
Musk, who only threw his official public support behind Trump in July, after the failed attempt on Trump’s life in Pennsylvania, made up for lost time with a surge of activity, rhetoric and cash.
One result has been Trump’s naming Musk and fellow wealthy businessman Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a non-government advisory post from which Musk plans to recommend cutting trillions of dollars from the federal budget.
‘I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times,’ president-elect Donald Trump said, siding with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in defending the H-1B visa program that lets skilled tech workers immigrate to the country https://t.co/gmHBk1L0NO pic.twitter.com/ewdzCDsOBW
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 30, 2024
[NOTE: Musk’s catbird seat, which critics say he outright purchased, presents what many characterize as clear conflicts of interests as he advises the government. In addition to major government contracts for SpaceX and Musk’s other companies, approximately $740M in Tesla Q3 revenue alone came from selling carbon credits — issued by the U.S. — to other manufacturers.]
But if Musk isn’t still contributing cash to Trump in the amounts he did as the campaign surged into November, the mega-billionaire’s tendency to issue sweeping, rhetorically potent statements that cannot be proven true or false is still a currency — and one that Trump is using to mint donations.
A week before his inauguration, Trump’s RNC team sent out an email entitled “Elon Musk just dropped a massive truth-bomb!” Clicking through, one finds a quote from Musk that reads “Had this election not been won by [DONALD J. TRUMP], civilization would be lost.”
That is the “truth-bomb” Musk is said to be dropping for Trump, which the RNC is using to pursue donations. Building on Musk’s hyperbolic end-times rhetoric, the RNC describes a future — presumed to be narrowly averted — with American “blood and treasures” shipped overseas while “murderous gangs” overtook the country and American jobs were “annihilated.”
Of donated funds, 80% go to the RNC while 20% go to the LPAC, a “joint fundraising committee of Never Surrender” — used to fund Trump’s various legal defenses. OpenSecrets reports that “Donald Trump’s political operation spent more than $81 million on lawyers representing the former president and his allies since the start of the 2024 election cycle, an average of about $171,000 per day in legal costs.”