Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has quickly turn into certainly one of Donald Trump‘s high political donors, and he’s now rising as one of many Republican presidential nominee’s most seen surrogates.
Musk, the world’s richest man, has given almost $75 million to America PAC, the tremendous political motion committee he created earlier this 12 months largely to again Trump, new Federal Election Fee filings reveal. Almost $72 million of that cash has already been spent, the disclosure report reveals.
The group’s large haul got here totally throughout the third quarter, between July and September. Musk is the one contributor listed throughout that interval.
The PAC, which was fashioned in late Could, stories having spent a complete of $102 million on the presidential race to this point, FEC filings present.
Not like most tremendous PACs, nevertheless, America PAC just isn’t spending its cash to order costly tv air time to run advertisements. As a substitute, the group’s filings present that it’s paying canvassers and funding unsolicited mail, texts and cellphone banking.
In the meantime, Musk introduced in a single day on X, the social media website he purchased for $44 billion in 2022, that he’ll embark on a multiday talking tour by means of Pennsylvania, the all-important presidential swing state.
“Tomorrow night through Monday, I will be giving a series of talks throughout Pennsylvania,” Musk wrote at 12:26 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
“If you’d like to attend one of my talks, there’s no attendance fee. You just need to have signed our petition supporting free speech & right to bear arms & have voted in this election,” he wrote.
Musk added in a observe up: “To clarify, you need have voted in Pennsylvania.”
That petition requires signers present private contact info, together with their full names, cellphone numbers, electronic mail addresses and mailing addresses. That voter info is extraordinarily invaluable to campaigns and political teams, who use it to hone their promoting and get-out-the-vote efforts.
Additional particulars concerning the occasions weren’t instantly clear. Emails to Musk and his associates weren’t instantly returned.
The pair of headlines underscore Musk’s shift to the political proper and his additional entrenchment in Trump’s bid to defeat Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Musk publicly endorsed Trump on July 13, minutes after the previous president survived an assassination try at a marketing campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
When Trump returned to that website for one more rally in early October, Musk joined him on stage sporting a black “Make America Great Again” hat and enthusiastically declared himself to be “Dark MAGA.”
In an interview final week on former Fox Information opinion host Tucker Carlson’s present on X, Musk stated that he created America PAC “really to support the core values that I believe in.”
He named plenty of broad phrases such free speech, secure cities and “self protection,” calling them “very obvious centrist positions.”
