South African billionaire Elon Musk dropped more than $250 million on the 2024 election in a successful bid to elect Donald Trump as president, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission that were made public Thursday.
Musk, a Pentagon contractor and CEO of Tesla, spent the majority of his money on contributions to his own America PAC: $239 million, per The New York Times, including $75 million in the final weeks of the race. That is the same PAC that Musk used to give away $1 million to various Trump voters in a scheme that appeared to run afoul of federal election laws, which prohibit cash payments as an incentive to cast a ballot (no enforcement action was taken by the Biden administration).
The deceptively named RBG PAC was another beneficiary of Musk's largesse. NBC News reported that the group — named for former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — received a total of $20.5 million in the 2024 cycle, all from Musk. The PAC, which claimed Ginsburg would have agreed with the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, was denounced by the justice's family.
Musk also donated $3 million to the MAHA Alliance, a super PAC tied to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's pick to lead the health department.
In addition to his direct spending on Trump and his allies' behalf, Musk turned his social platform, X, into a vehicle for pro-Trump messaging, using his own account and the site's algorithm to promote various right-wing conspiracy theories and talking points. For that, Musk, a Pentagon contractor, has been rewarded with a position co-chairing a pro-austerity commission, the "Department of Government Efficiency," which has a stated aim of slashing trillions of dollars in federal spending, a goal that would require dramatic cuts to programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
