Elon Musk spent over $250m on political donations to help Donald Trump retake the White House this year, new federal filings show.
Federal Election Commission documents published Thursday revealed that Musk handed over more than $230m to the America PAC — a political action committee that the Tesla billionaire created and which ultimately grew into a vital fundraising organ for the Trump campaign.
In the few weeks before Election Day, Musk made three separate $25m donations to America PAC, the filings show.
The Tesla CEO also pumped an additional $20.5m into the mysterious RBG PAC, named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late liberal Supreme Court justice. The group — which the late justice’s granddaughter had criticized during the campaign as an “affront” to Ginsburg’s legacy — defended Trump’s views on abortion, insisting in ads that he was not in favor of a federal ban on the procedure.
RBG PAC — whose sole donor was Musk — spent a considerable portion of the funds on advertising and text messages that claimed Trump’s views on abortion were similar to Ginsburg’s.
That messaging flies in the face of Trump’s record, particularly his decision to appoint three conservative justices who ultimately voted to overturn Roe v Wade in June 2022, eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion.
The scale of Musk’s donations illustrates the sheer force of the billionaire’s financial power in the 2024 election.
On top of the America PAC payments, Musk donated to dozens of state Republican parties. The filings also reveal the billionaire made a strategic payment of $825m to the Hispanic Leadership Alliance, a not-for-profit based in Austin, Texas, that seeks to support and engage Hispanic communities in the US. Trump ultimately gained a 14-percentage point swing in the Latino vote, with 48 per cent of Latino men casting votes in his favor, according to the Associated Press.
Musk’s financial support of Trump’s campaign has paid off for him personally, as he’s now heading up a new nongovernmental task force dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a reference to the crypto “memecoin”. Musk and the initiative’s co-leader, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, have vowed to slash government spending by firing workers and cutting programs.
“I think we just need to make sure we spend the public’s money well,” Musk told reporters on Thursday during a visit to Capitol Hill.
