Donald Trump and Elon Musk (Getty)
Elon Musk gave $20 million to a PAC seeking to convince voters that Donald Trump and Ruth Bader Ginsburg held similar views on abortion. Musk's oversized role in the 2024 election was revealed in federal documents filed roughly 10 days ago and one month after election day.
From a New York Times report, under the headline "Elon Musk Backed Trump With Over $250 Million, Fueling the Unusual ‘RBG PAC’; The enormous spending from the world’s richest man quietly fueled allied groups and was revealed only now, as Mr. Musk plays a key role in the presidential transition," reporters Maggie Haberman and Theodore Schleifer write:
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, spent over a quarter of a billion dollars in the final months of this year’s election to help Donald J. Trump win the presidency, federal filings revealed recently.
The sum is a fraction of Mr. Musk’s wealth. But it is nonetheless a staggering amount from a single donor, who poured the cash into allied groups and is now playing a role in helping shape the next administration.
One of Mr. Musk’s most brazen moves — which emerged only days ago — was spending $20 million to prop up a super PAC that was named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late liberal Supreme Court justice, but that sought to help Mr. Trump by softening his anti-abortion positions.
Mr. Musk put the lion’s share of the money he donated toward his main super PAC, America PAC, cutting three checks for $25 million each in the final weeks of the race, according to the new filings with the Federal Election Commission. Mr. Musk also spent $40.5 million on legally controversial checks to voters in swing states who signed a petition in support of the Constitution.
Over the course of the race, he gave America PAC a staggering $239 million in both cash and in-kind contributions. In total, Mr. Musk and entities he controls disclosed about $277 million in donations to federal groups this cycle.
Where did all of that money go? Haberman and Schleifer provide details:
America PAC conducted what it described as an expansive ground-game effort on Mr. Trump’s behalf. Mr. Musk came to see defeating President Biden as a vital imperative and swung hard toward Mr. Trump after the assassination attempt against him in July. He became so invested in the effort that he campaigned frequently for the Republican nominee in Pennsylvania, widely seen as the most important battleground state.
Mr. Musk also donated $4 million to America PAC on Nov. 12, a week after Election Day. He has vowed to keep his super PAC active by targeting progressive prosecutors and supporting Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Since the election, Mr. Musk has become inescapable at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club in Florida. He is leading an effort to try to trim the size of the federal government, and he has weighed in on various personnel choices that the incoming president has made.
While some in Mr. Trump’s orbit — and at times the president-elect himself — have seemed weary of Mr. Musk’s constant presence, the upside he brings in the form of enormous financial support and a major social-media platform have clearly outweighed any concerns.
What is the total of Musk-linked funds going to support Trump? There is no clear answer to that question at the moment, Haberman and Schleifer report:
Mr. Musk’s total spending on the election is not yet known — and may never be. He cut other political checks to conservative down-ballot groups this cycle, including $12 million to two groups trying to elect Republican senators, the Senate Leadership Fund and the Sentinel Action Fund. Mr. Musk, who originally wanted to keep his support for Mr. Trump quiet, may have also funded dark-money entities that will never disclose his involvement or donations.
On Thursday, Mr. Musk was revealed as the hidden funding source behind RBG PAC, a Republican group that worked to elect Mr. Trump but was named after a liberal jurist who despised him.
A trust belonging to Mr. Musk was the sole funder of RBG PAC, which had not yet disclosed its donors before a late filing on a recent Thursday. During the election, the group had run ads arguing that Mr. Trump’s position on abortion was not dissimilar from that of Justice Ginsburg, a feminist icon. “Great Minds Think Alike,” read the text on the super PAC’s website, featuring twin large photos of Mr. Trump and Justice Ginsburg, who died in 2020.
Her family bitterly opposed the ads. Ms. Ginsburg’s granddaughter, Clara Spera, said in a statement in October that the family condemned the use of her grandmother’s name and that doing so to “support Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, and specifically to suggest that she would approve of his position on abortion, is nothing short of appalling.”
Did RBG PAC help turn the tide of the election in Trump's favor and away from his opponent, longtime abortion-rights supporter Kamala Harris? That might never be answered with certainty, but it appears to be possible. From The Times report:
The effort by RBG PAC was meant to reassure female voters who were wary of Mr. Trump because of his opposition to abortion rights. He has boasted of being proud of appointing the conservative justices, including Justice Ginsburg’s successor, who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.
When the group began running ads, there were hints of Mr. Musk’s involvement. The group’s leader, May Mailman, at times defended Mr. Musk on television.
The ads were part of a broader effort to use various pro-Trump entities to fund ads targeted at specific segments of voters in a race that Mr. Trump’s advisers anticipated could be closer than it ultimately was. He swept the seven battlegrounds and won the popular vote, the first time a Republican had done so in 20 years.