The long and grim history of Trumpism has yielded plenty of cringe-inducing moments, from Rudy Giuliani’s bizarre 2020 press conference outside Four Seasons Total Landscaping to Donald Trump’s recent detour into debunked and disgraceful race science . It’s fair to wonder if the bar of human dignity could possibly fall any lower.
Over the weekend, tech bro billionaire and X CEO Elon Musk laid the question to rest with his recent trip to Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa. Trump has always demanded that high-profile converts to the MAGA movement show their loyalty by debasing themselves in public. But Musk seemed different; he seemed to welcome Trump’s invitation to humiliate himself.
It was a sad sight for Americans watching at home as they were introduced to the radicalized, conspiracy theory-obsessed Musk, whom X users have known for years. Now he’s unleashing his $264 billion fortune in a last-ditch effort to influence the 2024 presidential election.
Musk may be happy to play Trump’s clown on TV, but his latest schemes are nothing to laugh about. He drew headlines on Monday after announcing that his political action committee, The America PAC, would offer swing-state residents $47 payments for every voter they referred . Musk’s stated goal was to encourage those voters to sign a petition supporting the First Amendment and gun rights. In reality, it’s one of the largest paid efforts in history to collect personal information and voter data.
“Easy money,” Musk mused in a post on X. Maybe so, but voters should think twice before taking Musk up on his too-good-to-be-true offer.
Musk’s goal is to collect information from at least 1 million voters in states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina — all states where Kamala Harris leads or very narrowly trails Trump. Information gathered by Musk’s PAC could then be used to target misinformation at persuadable voters, something Musk routinely engages in on his personal X account.
We don’t need to speculate on how Musk might abuse the mountain of data he wants to collect, either. Officials in Michigan and North Carolina are already investigating his PAC for an alleged false voter registration scheme . America PAC allegedly promised to register prospective voters in exchange for their personal information, but instead took the personal data and ran. Both of those states are also part of Musk’s latest pay-for-signatures effort.
Musk’s political puppeteering is fueled by his apocalyptic view of a world in which Harris wins the White House. “If [Trump] loses, I’m f***ed,” Musk told disgraced former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson this week. “How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?”
Musk is a hero in his own imagination, and that fantasy justifies his repeated attempts to subvert our democracy with a wave of pro-Trump disinformation.
We also don’t need to speculate about Trump’s willingness to violate election law and coordinate with “independent” PACs. The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan election watchdog, uncovered high-level documents that suggest Trump’s 2016 campaign illegally coordinated with another billionaire-funded group, the Make America Number 1 super PAC.
Ironically, that coordination also involved using a tech company to unethically harvest politically useful Facebook user data — Cambridge Analytica , founded by early Trump loyalists Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer. The faces may have changed over the last eight years, but the grift remains the same.
Those $47 cash “gifts” are just a trickle of the money America PAC has unleashed since July, when Musk pledged to spend up to $45 million per month to influence the election. That those efforts focus on paying off voters instead of educating or persuading them speaks volumes about how Musk and the MAGA movement think democracy works. Everything is for sale — even (and especially) your vote.
Musk and other mega-rich Trump supporters want to believe that other peoples’ principles can be bought for as little as $47. That’s because so many of them sold their own principles to the MAGA movement for far less — in Musk’s case, for nothing but a heavy round of public mockery . But regular Americans are motivated by real, deeply held values. That’s why these cynical electioneering schemes keep failing, and why Trump’s polling keeps falling.
Trump and his band of sycophants want Americans to believe that he has a bold vision for our national future. In reality, all they have to offer is a small cash payment in exchange for your silent obedience. As Trump and company are learning, most Americans think preserving our democracy is worth much more.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.
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