Elon Musk Invests $200M in Trump, Treats Government Like X (Twitter)

Key Points:

• Elon Musk invested $200 million in Trump’s campaign, creating America PAC for voter outreach.
• America PAC employed various strategies, including paid canvassers and social media advertising.

Elon Musk applies his X (Twitter) management style to politics. His political strategies, including voter incentives and social media amplification, echo his corporate approach and could potentially influence future governmental structures.

Elon Musk, the entrepreneur who founded Tesla and SpaceX, has waded deeper into politics with an investment estimated at roughly $200 million in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. In addition to money, Musk is engaged, having participated in campaign activities while using his social media platform, X-formerly Twitter-to amplify Trump’s message.

Elon Musk’s Political Influence Grows

In May 2024, Musk started America PAC, a political action committee that had become one of the biggest players in the election. The organization has spent more than $170 million since its creation and up until Election Day. As a personally active member himself, Musk has gone on to conduct campaign activities that included moving to Pennsylvania for town halls and Q&A sessions.

America PAC’s strategy has been based on three key goals:

• The registration of new voters
• The promotion of early voting
• The mobilization of people who probably are not registered or voters

The group has hired paid canvassers and invested heavily in direct mail and social media advertising targeting a younger demographic that aligns with Musk’s fan base. After some initial organizational hiccups, America PAC grew to a staff of 2,000 workers and did huge outreach, reportedly having canvassers knock on some 11 million doors, including in rural areas where few campaigns bother to go.

According to Bloomberg, Musk used the money paid to a voter for referring others as leverage to attract voters’ engagement. The Super PAC promised $47 to every registered voter, an amount that shot to $100 for those in Pennsylvania who signed a petition. Musk further used the giveaway of $1 million daily to some lucky petitioners’ names, an offer that received unprecedented media space but was countered legally.

Read more: Trump Winning Historic Second Term as 47th President in 2024

Is Elon Musk Buying Political Influence?

The billionaire’s involvement in the campaign is seen as a way to test how tight-knit the relationship between him and Trump would be, which would cause him to treat his companies and Tesla well if he were to win. Critics show this as a potential slippery slope of having wealthy individuals like Musk hold too much leverage in a Trump presidency.

His political activities affect business, too. Tesla saw its stock surge 25% following Trump’s victory, and Musk’s net worth swelled to $50 billion. Analysts, however, caution that an alignment with Trump will lead to the boycott of Tesla’s core customers, such as midlevel centrists who fear climate change.

With Musk closing the gap between business and politics even further, there is speculation about just how deep his involvement was with the Trump campaign or what that might mean in the years to come. This entrepreneur conducts politics precisely as he does at X. Therefore, government structures led by Musk’s would-be ideas might be treated this way.