Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio in Detroit on June 16, 2024
To date, Elon Musk has spent more than $366 million to elect Republicans in the midterms, flexing a rich man’s power to buy our elections and a partisan court’s perversion of the First Amendment.
As he sits at the sweet end of a government pipeline, Musk’s motivations are clear. The recipient of $38 billion in federal tax breaks, subsidies, and contracts — i.e., welfare for the rich — Musk is buying the midterms to keep corporate and wealth taxes artificially low and regulations non-existent as he writes his own taxpayer-funded future.
Due to the lack of any substantive messaging, a good part of Musk’s campaign money is being spent to pin the “socialist” label on Democratic Party candidates. Republican super PACs poured money into far-left Democrats’ primaries just so they could label winning candidates ‘socialist’ in the midterms. Speaker Mike Johnson warns repeatedly that if Democrats win the midterms, the country will “go down some road toward a communist utopia,” unaware that communism and socialism are not even the same thing.
Spearheading the ad campaign against both, Trump ran taxpayer-funded commercials vowing to defeat “communism, socialism, and Marxism in America.”
Scare tactics with a little help from Fox News
Trump’s nationwide campaign ads ran during prime-time slots on Fox News and Newsmax, and onCBS Evening News and Face the Nation, during high-profile public affairs shows, and during prime-time college football games. Trump illegally spent over $22 million in taxpayer money forcing this partisan campaign on voters nationwide, until a federal judge ordered it stopped.
Republicans’ entire midterm message, subsidized by Musk, boils down to “socialism bad.” Fox News employs the word “socialism” in headlines to describe virtually any political position Trump doesn’t like.
When reporting on progressive victories in state and local primaries, Fox came up with “socialist surge” to scare the right and fracture the left with “socialist winning streaks” in swing states. Fox also platforms a “Socialism Watch” segment that tracks congressional bills they label socialist, or “straight from Castro’s playbook.” Scary things like protecting healthcare, regulating clean air and water pollution, and imposing a wealth tax after the Republicans’ big ugly bill awarded $2.3 trillion in tax cuts to the nation’s richest 10%.
Socialism proves an elusive scare tactic
Given Republicans’ persistent warnings about the dangers of socialism, one expects, at minimum, that they understand what the term means. One expects too much.
Vice President JD Vance, who represents the well-educated, intellectual minority wing of MAGA, was speaking last week during a press conference when someone asked him to define socialism, and to explain why socialist candidates keep emerging across the country. Vance fumbled, then recovered.
He opened by calling socialism “a hard term to define these days.” “Classically,” he explained, “you would think socialism is about prioritizing workers.” He then caught himself and switched his approach, and said, “I don't know what the term means anymore,” before offering his own take. “I think in reality what it actually means in the American context is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers and you want boys to play in girls’ sports.”
Vance’s formulation has nothing to do with socialism, and bears no resemblance whatsoever to any real-world political platform. So Musk and the majority of Republican super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to warn about sending jobs overseas—which their own corporate donors, not Democrats, are doing— and letting boys play in girls’ sports. Nothing substantive about inflation, Iran, gas/energy/diesel costs, the price of groceries, or anything the bottom 90% is feeling.
The red scare is coming from inside the house
Vance pivoted in his answer because he caught himself about to walk into a trap. By strict definition, socialism is an economic and political system in which the means of production—such as factories, land, raw materials, and machinery—are owned or controlled collectively by society or the state, rather than by private individuals or corporations.
Vance realized mid-sentence that he could not define actual socialism without exposing Trump’s control-and-command economy that meets the textbook definition of socialism. The media has said far too little about Trump taking unprecedented stakes in private industries. As NPR reported recently, “The Trump administration has announced equity stakes in more than 30 private companies,” which means the state now owns:
- Intel Corp.: A 10% stake in the semiconductor giant’s business, resulting in partial-nationalization of the semiconductor giant;
- MP Materials, the only operational U.S. rare-earth mine: The Department of Defense secured a 15% equity stake, making Washington the largest shareholder;
- USA Rare Earth- Trump’s Commerce Department has acquired a 10% stake;
- Critical Minerals & Energy: Trump’s administration acquired a 10% equity stake in Lithium Americas Corp., and 10% of Trilogy Metals;
- United States Steel Corporation -rather than a direct economic or financial equity stake in steel production, the administration negotiated a stake known as a ‘golden share,’ granting Trump substantial control over steel-making operations.
- Defense- Trump also plans to take ownership stakes in major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
Common sense, shame, and irony, are dead
Each of these unprecedented acquisitions fits the hallmark definition of socialism. In other words, Trump is again projecting, falsely warning the nation about socialism because he is actively imposing it. Republicans have taken significant and unprecedented ownership interests in the private sector, imposing nationwide socialism while fraudulently misnaming Democrats “socialist.”
Reason contributing editor Veronique de Rugy has observed that, “Federal ownership of private companies has become routine, and it is happening on the right even as members busily point fingers at the left for its socialism.” De Rugy wrote, “(It’s) a government acquiring the means of production one letter of intent at a time, and a political party acting as though socialism is something only the other side can do.”
Trump recently acknowledged that his MAGA supporters clap like seals when he insults their intelligence to their faces. Musk’s and Republicans’ lies about socialism intentionally trade on that ignorance. It is shameful to manipulate your own voters into believing what is not true, but that is Trump’s con.
The con is up. Or it will be if people care enough to vote.
Sabrina Haake is a political analyst and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.