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Elon Musk’s super political action committee (Pac) spent about $200m to help elect Donald Trump to a second presidency, according to a person familiar with the group’s spending, funding an effort that set a new standard for how billionaires can influence elections.
The billionaire chief executive officer of Tesla and SpaceX provided the vast majority of the money to America Pac, which focused on low-propensity and first-time voters, according to the Associated Press source, who was not authorized to disclose the figure publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. In turn, as CNBC reported, Musk’s net worth jumped $70bn since Trump’s victory in the 5 November election.
The AP source’s information confirmed the Wall Street Journal’s reporting in July that Musk had committed to spend about $45m monthly to what became the pro-Trump America Pac.
America Pac’s work was aided by a March ruling from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that paved the way for Super Pacs to coordinate their canvassing efforts with campaigns, allowing the Trump campaign to rely on the near-unlimited capital of the nation’s most high-profile billionaire to boost turnout in deep-red parts of the country. That allowed the campaign to spend the money it saved on everything from national ad campaigns to targeted outreach toward demographics Democrats once dominated.
The plan worked. Trump saw key turnout surges in battleground states, and at the end of the campaign the president-elect credited Musk’s role in the race. “We have a new star,” Trump said at his election night party in Florida. “A star is born – Elon!”
“The FEC ruling cleared the way for us to gain more benefit from soft money enterprises that were going out and doing this work anyway,” said James Blair, the Trump campaign’s political director.
Blair worked as the main bridge between the Trump operation and groups like America Pac – a far cry from the early days of Super Pacs having to decide their strategy without communicating officially with the campaigns they were backing.
“By conserving hard dollars, we were able to go wider and deeper on paid voter contact and advertising programs,” Blair said. That, he added, included broad ad campaigns aimed at a national audience, as well as – critically – more targeted campaigns directed at Black and Latino men.
It wasn’t just Musk’s money that helped Trump. The billionaire businessman became one of Trump’s highest-profile surrogates in the final months of the campaign, often joining the former president on stage. His support gave Trump a clear opening into the universe of younger men who look up to Musk.
Trump also benefited from Musk’s ownership of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and the company’s work to end many of the rules that hampered Trump before he was kicked off in 2021. Like many conservatives, Musk is a fierce critic of social media efforts to counter disinformation, arguing that those efforts amount to pro-government censorship.
He was also a critic of actor Dana Carvey’s impression of him on the most recent Saturday Night Live. In reaction to a skit in which Carvey satirized Musk, the billionaire posted on Sunday on X that the comedy show was “dying”.
Musk is now expected to play a key role in a second Trump administration. The president-elect has said he will place Musk, whose rocket company works with the defense department and intelligence agencies, in charge of a new government efficiency commission.
A report from the Guardian found America Pac’s efforts were rife with paid canvassers faking their work and saying they had knocked on doors that they had not visited. Multiple reports from Wired alleged that some of those paid canvassers worked in poor conditions, including riding in the back of a rented U-Haul van and facing threats to meet unfeasible quotas. Canvassers were fired after the Wired report, leading to a lawsuit against America Pac.
A spokesperson for America Pac declined to comment on the record for this story.
Musk, meanwhile, indicated in an election night conversation on X that his Pac will stay involved in politics, “preparing for the midterms and any intermediate elections, as well as looking at elections at the district attorney and sort of judicial levels”.
Guardian staff contributed reporting
