“Fight! Fight! Fight!” Addressing the public by jumping on the podium, “Make America great again” cap screwed on his head and wearing a belt buckle with the logo of his company Tesla, billionaire Elon Musk made a notable appearance at Donald Trump’s meeting in Butler (Pennsylvania), Saturday October 5. Urging spectators to check their registration on the electoral lists and to ensure that of their loved ones, even if it means being “a hassle”, the boss of Tesla and Space democracy” the re-election of the Democrats, tells the progressive daily New York Times.
If the support of the billionaire, whose fortune is estimated at $264 billion in 2024, is not new, it was, however, the first time that he spoke at a Republican meeting. And for good reason, Elon Musk has redoubled his efforts in recent weeks to bring Donald Trump back to the White House. “I’m completely [avec lui]” he assured during an interview broadcast Monday with conservative presenter Tucker Carlson, recalls Agence France Presse. “My opinion is that if Trump does not win this election, it is the last election that we will have “, he told the former star presenter of Fox News, the favorite channel of American conservatives. In the same sequence, he also declared provocatively that no one had tried to assassinate Kamala Harris ( unlike Trump), because it would simply be “useless”, indicates the Washington Post.
Funding one of the most influential campaign groups
On his account on the social network His bio now says only: “Read @America to understand why I support Trump for president.”
A reference to America PAC, one of the most ambitious and well-funded pro-Trump support groups, into which he has poured millions of dollars. The campaign site, blocked abroad, indicates at the top of the page the political priorities defended by its supporters: “Secure borders, safe cities, freedom of expression, reasonable spending, a fair judicial system, the law for self-defense.” A carousel relays tweets from conservative figures and propaganda videos in particular confusing immigration and crime.
A theme regularly put forward by Elon Musk, who spreads the theory according to which the Democrats voluntarily orchestrate the arrival of thousands of migrants committed to their cause to stay in power. He recently accused the Democratic camp of funneling “illegal” migrants into a handful of key states so that they would eventually obtain American citizenship and vote Democratic. “Today, these gaps in key states are sometimes 10,000, 20,000 votes. So what will happen if you put hundreds of thousands of people in each key state?” he said on Monday, relayed by AFP.
To get his propaganda to as many voters as possible, the billionaire does not hesitate to bribe citizens so that they sign op-eds. “For each voter you convince to sign this in a swing state, you will receive 47 dollars!”, announced Elon Musk on weapon”, aiming to collect 1 million supporters.
While American law makes it a crime to give or receive money to encourage voting, it is not illegal to pay voters to sign a petition or people to sign a petition. encourage it.
A 180 million campaign
A real business, the American PAC in turn recruits subcontractors responsible for canvassing hundreds of thousands of voters to convince them to slip a Republican ballot into the ballot box on November 5. One of them “knocked on approximately 250,000 doors in Arizona and approximately 150,000 doors in Nevada [des États clés pour l’élection] during his three-week mission”, informs the New York Times (NYT).
“Join our team. Salary starts at $30 an hour, with performance bonuses,” we can also read on the website of the American PAC, which seeks to recruit individual candidates – a salary higher than that of most towing companies. Four weeks before the election, he does not hesitate to pour out his personal fortune to prevent Kamala Harris from accessing the White House: in total, he would have planned to donate 180 million to the Trump campaign, according to the NYT.