TITLE: Here’s Where Musk Gets the Money to Fund Trump’s Campaign
https://www.barrons.com/articles/elon-musk-donate-trump-010ef8c9
EXCERPTS: Musk is the world’s richest person, according to Forbes, worth some $250 billion, but he doesn’t actually generate much cash flow. He doesn’t take an annual salary at Tesla. Most of his wealth is in stock of his companies. Tesla stock accounts for roughly 60% of Forbes wealth figure.
Tesla is also the only publicly traded company in what Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas describes as the Musk-onomy, which also includes X, xAI, and SpaceX. That raises the risk of selling Tesla stock to fund his expenditures.
It’s relatively simple for Musk to borrow against his Tesla fortune. Excluding options, he has roughly 411 million shares worth about $90 billion. Bankers are typically willing to advance cash when the loan is secured with an ample amount of stock.
At the end of March, Musk had pledged about 238 million shares of his Tesla stock as collateral, according to company reports. That gives him access to about $12 billion in loans.
Tesla didn’t respond to a request about Musk’s current collateral and lending.
It’s difficult to know exactly how Musk chooses to generate and spend money. For now, investors have to be content that he has enough without needing to liquidate any of his core Tesla holdings.
TITLE: Republicans Tell Trump That Elon Musk’s Super PAC Is Blowing It
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-elon-musk-republicans-super-pac-election-2024-1235134877/
EXCERPT: In the final stretch of a relentlessly close, “trench-warfare”-style race between Kamala Harris and Trump, Musk has given at least $75 million to America PAC.
This amount comes on top of millions already funneled into the Super PAC by Musk allies in Silicon Valley, including Shaun Maguire, Joe Lonsdale, and Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. But Musk was the group’s only reported donor between July and September.
Musk, who established the Super PAC earlier this year, did not formally endorse Trump until after an attempt on the candidate’s life at a July rally in Pennsylvania. But The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the billionaire’s support of right-wing groups dates back further.
At least $50 million in donations from Musk funded an ad campaign from Citizens for Sanity during the 2022 midterms, including spots that attacked Democrats in battleground states by demonizing immigrants and transgender people. The PAC, incorporated that same year, includes board members from the America First Legal Foundation, founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who is known for pushing far-right anti-immigration policy. According to the Journal, the money was routed through a dark money group led by consultants tied to DeSantis.
Musk also contributed at least $10 million through the conservative group Faithful & Strong Policies to support DeSantis’ failed 2024 presidential bid.
America PAC is led by two veterans of that DeSantis run: Phil Cox, formerly of the Never Back Down Super PAC, and Generra Peck, who served for a short time as DeSantis’ 2024 campaign manager. Peck was reportedly among those who advocated for DeSantis to launch his challenge against Trump in a live-streamed audio event on the Musk-owned platform X (formerly Twitter) that was marred by technical glitches. Cox leads a sprawling consortium of consulting and lobbying firms; Peck is the president of one of the companies.
As with the DeSantis campaign, which ended with the governor failing to win a single state primary, America PAC is heavily focused on canvassing. Never Back Down ran into problems by bringing in paid canvassers; America PAC is similarly paying its canvassers. Such presidential election fieldwork is typically primarily carried out by unpaid volunteers and organized by the actual campaign, not outside groups.
Yet America PAC is now in large part responsible for Trump’s swing-state ground game. The Trump campaign has effectively delegated the bulk of its field operation to the Super PAC, which can accept unlimited donations, thanks in large part to a Federal Election Commission decision this spring that allowed campaigns and outside groups to coordinate their canvassing operations. (The decision was the latest blow to the idea that outside groups are expected to operate independently from candidates.)
Another potential factor in America PAC’s perceived struggles has to do with the Trump campaign’s reliance on a smartphone app called Campaign Sidekick, which is often nonfunctional in rural areas with slower internet where the group is trying to reach low-propensity voters.
Some of the concerns and complaints about the Musk-led operation have already trickled out publicly. GOP operatives and activists in toss-up states are saying they have seen little trace of America PAC’s canvassers at work. The group has switched canvassing vendors twice in the closing months of the campaign and, according to its website, the Super PAC is still looking to hire door-knockers just three weeks before Election Day.
In an interview with the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro last week, Trump was either unwilling or unable to address concerns about his team’s GOTV strategy when Shapiro suggested he’d been hearing lackluster reviews about the Team Trump ground game in tipping-point states.
Beyond any logistical shortcomings, America PAC exhibits Musk’s unmistakable sense of cringe meme humor in its ads. The group has also started featuring screenshots of Musk’s X posts and pictures of Musk in its ads on Facebook. Some of the ads are just plain sloppy: One Facebook ad calling on Pennsylvanians to “STOP THE INVASION” features a photo of refugees who were detained in Greece over a decade ago.
Meanwhile, the Super PAC is apparently devoting considerable resources to collecting one million signatures on a purely symbolic petition supporting the First and Second Amendments, paying people $47 for every registered voter they refer who adds their name to the petition. It’s unclear how this would have any discernible effect on voter turnout.
NOTE: While Elon’s $47 petition scheme may not “have any discernible effect on voter turnout,” it is exactly what we’d expect a surveillance capitalist to do … and that’s collect data. IMHO, that’s the goal of the petition … he’s compiling a master list of people he can target and manipulate with algorithmically-managed information or misinformation or disinformation. They, along with all the people who like and share and comment on his Twitter posts, are now future customers for his propaganda. - jp
TITLE: Elon Musk Helped Fund The Most Cynical Super PAC Of The 2024 Election
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-funds-most-cynical-super-pac_n_670ef96be4b0c5b8c0afcc86
EXCERPT: A super PAC engaged in a cynical two-step designed to simultaneously discourage Arab American and Jewish voters by advertising contrasting messages about Vice President Kamala Harris’ Middle East policies is being funded by a dark-money group that is bankrolled by right-wing tech and auto industry billionaire Elon Musk, according to a financial disclosure made public on Tuesday.
Here’s how it works: In areas of Michigan with large numbers of Arab and Muslim voters, Future Coalition PAC is running digital ads about how Vice President Kamala Harris is a staunch and unyielding supporter of Israel.
“Kamala and Doug, America’s pro-Israel power couple,” the narrator of one of the group’s ads declares after discussing Israel’s “noble fight against the radical terrorists in Gaza.” One mail item from the group says Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, “leans on Jewish husband Doug Emhoff to advise on high-level pro-Israel policies.”
Many Jewish Democrats have argued that, among other qualities, the ads’ focus on second gentleman Doug Emhoff is antisemitic.
That component of the advertising blitz reprises a well-known, though not exactly common, bit of campaign dark arts: Highlight a quality you claim to see as positive or negative, knowing the intended audience will have the opposite takeaway.
But it’s the second component of Future Coalition PAC’s advertising that really raises its cynicism to new heights. The group is simultaneously targeting Pennsylvania’s Jewish voters with advertisements claiming Harris has been “pandering” to Palestinians.
“In Jewish communities throughout America, questions are being asked: Why did Kamala Harris support denying Israel the weapons needed to defeat the Hamas terrorists who massacred thousands?” the 30-second spot says. “And why did Harris show sympathy for college protesters who are rabidly antisemitic?”
The ads aim to help former President Donald Trump by cleaving Jewish and Arab American voters away from Harris in key states at a time when both groups are deeply invested in Israel’s U.S.-backed wars in Gaza and Lebanon ― albeit usually for divergent reasons.
For voters curious about just who is funding Future Coalition PAC, the group’s disclosure to the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday offers some welcome, if incomplete, information.
The group’s $3 million budget so far comes entirely from a nonprofit, Building America’s Future, which is not required to reveal the names of its donors.
However, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Tesla co-founder Musk, one of the wealthiest men in the world and an occasional spreader of antisemitic conspiracy theories, is among the backers of Building America’s Future.
SEE ALSO:
Elon Musk expands his empire of misinformation
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/15/business/elon-musk-robotaxi-nightcap/index.html
JD Vance Thinks Social Media Bans Are Tyranny—Except When Elon Musk Bans Dirt on Him
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/jd-vance-thinks-social-media-bans-are-tyranny-except-elon-musk-censorship