Elon Musk donates 'sizable amount' to shadowy new pro-Trump super PAC: report

12 July 2024

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reportedly made a significant donation to a relatively new super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump.

Bloomberg reported Friday that Musk — who Forbes ranks as the world's richest person with a net worth of approximately $250 billion — is now getting involved in the 2024 presidential election despite promising months ago to stay out of it. The publication's sources said that Musk donated "a sizable amount" (which will become known after next week's Federal Election Commission disclosure deadline) to a super PAC called "America PAC," which the New York Times reports was launched in May.

"Musk’s efforts threaten to deal a devastating blow to Biden and Democrats, who are already mired in an intraparty battle over the president’s political future," wrote Bloomberg reporters Jennifer Jacobs and Bill Allison.

America PAC is largely focused on direct voter outreach to Trump supporters in the key battleground states likely to decide the 2024 Electoral College majority, like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Times reported that the PAC is encouraging Republicans to engage in the early voting process, and to vote by mail as well as with absentee ballots. These are all notably the same grassroots, get-out-the-vote tactics that Democrats relied on in 2020 to elect President Joe Biden – particularly given the Covid-19 pandemic .

"The group, America PAC, was created last month and remains fairly secretive. But over the last two weeks, it has spent $6.6 million on behalf of Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, according to public filings, vaulting it suddenly into the top tier of pro-Trump outside groups in the general election," Times reporter Theodore Schleifer wrote in June. "In recent days, America PAC has uploaded a 15-second video of Mr. Trump to its nascent social media accounts, in which he encourages absentee voting, early voting and making a plan for Election Day."

Texas-based Republican campaign finance lawyer Chris Gober formed the PAC. So far, the group has reported more than $6 million in spending on "canvassing/field operations" the the vendor In Field Strategies, The Times described that firm as "a large Republican grass-roots operation that has been paid by the Republican National Committee and, more recently, the presidential campaigns of two of Mr. Trump’s rivals in the GOP primary race, former Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Nikki Haley of South Carolina."

Bloomberg reported that America PAC is the "biggest spender on direct voter contacts," and has already spent more than $13 million on field outreach operations. It's likely Musk's donation will go toward bolstering the PAC's expenditures on directly engaging with voters in the final months before the election.

Notably, Musk's donation comes roughly four months after he tweeted that he wouldn't be using his immense wealth to support either party's presidential candidate in 2024.

"Just to be super clear, I am not donating money to either candidate for US President," Musk tweeted on March 6.

Click here to read Bloomberg's report in its entirety (subscription required).

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