What power does Elon Musk hold as a campaigner?
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"If he loses, I'm fucked."
Those are the words of tech titan Elon Musk during a recent interview with far-right former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson. The "he" in question is, of course, former President Donald Trump, whose reelection bid Musk has enthusiastically endorsed, insisting last week that "this will be the last election in America" if Trump isn't returned to office in November.
Although Musk has long mixed his personal brand (and professional brands) with his conservative ideology, his comments to Carlson and appearance at Trump's Butler, Pennsylvania rally this month mark a new phase of his political activism. As the 2024 presidential election enters its final stretch, the world's richest man has moved not only to align himself with Trump's MAGA movement but is now actively using his historic wealth and influence to facilitate the GOP's electoral success. Trump, meanwhile, has said that, if elected, he would task Musk with leading an "efficiency commission" to audit the whole of the federal government — with which Musk happens to have numerous lucrative contracts.
While Musk's immense wealth and enormous cultural footprint, particularly online, are undeniable, his ability to actually move the electoral needle remains entirely untested.
'Just be a pest'
As befits the world's wealthiest person, much of Musk's political activism comes in the form of money. His political action committee set up to support Trump's candidacy is offering "starting wages of $30 an hour to individuals seeking to increase voter registration and turnout" Fox News said. Musk's PAC is also "circulating a petition in which voters pledge their support for the First and Second Amendments" in exchange for "$47 for each voter recruited to sign it," The New York Times said.
Beyond his financial clout, Musk's ownership of X also presents a lever for his partisan activism. Despite the "waning" influence of the once-dominant social media platform, X remains a "space peopled with politicians, journalists and politically engaged users" in which Musk can "elevate certain stories and individuals, or perhaps direct attention away from those that are less politically expedient," The New Statesman said. "In a race with fine margins, that limited impact can alter outcomes."
Ultimately, however, Musk's greatest contribution to the Trump campaign may be in his voter turnout effort. Trump's get-out-the-vote operation is now "principally being run" by Musk's America PAC, The Guardian said. And while Trump had initially predicted his campaign would have "multiple PACs drive the rest of the vote, with six weeks until the election, only America PAC has a material presence of 300 to 400 employees in each of the seven battleground states." Musk himself has been entirely forthright about his focus on voter turnout on Trump's behalf. "Honestly, you want to just be a pest," Musk said during his appearance at Trump's Pennsylvania rally. "Just be a pest to everyone you know, people on the street, everywhere."
'Actions voters find cringeworthy'
Musk's financial influence on the race — and particularly his $47 per pledge effort — "speaks volumes about how Musk and the MAGA movement think democracy works," said Democratic strategist Max Burns at The Hill. That Musk would use rhetoric like predicting this would be the "last election" will have "dangerous consequences" in 2025 and beyond, no matter who wins in November, said CNN's Brian Stelter. "That kind of rhetoric is going to make it very hard for all of us to be Americans, to be neighbors next year."
Although Musk is able to "command attention that outweighs other surrogates," said MSNBC's Allan Smith, that same attention is often the "result of actions voters find cringeworthy — and the former president and his campaign may find unhelpful." Musk's much-memed appearance at Trump's rally may have seemed an "authentic display of the optimistic fervor" to existing Trump supporters, but "detractors were harsher, interpreting Mr. Musk's bunny hops as a cringe-y spectacle from a tech savant with a history of awkward public appearances," said The New York Times.
"Republicans love his money, no doubt," Mother Jones said. But Musk's plans to visit Pennsylvania on Trump's behalf between now and Election Day represent "peak donor-brain to think that swing-state voters want to hear anything more from a union-buster with the emotional maturity of a seventh-grade gamer." More acutely, Musk's financially motivated voter turnout operation risks "incentivizing bad data, which is what you really don't want in a get-out-the-vote operation."
Ultimately, by jumping about the Trump train, Musk may have damaged his already fragile reputation most of all. "The man once seen as a tech visionary, a real-life Tony Stark," said MSNBC's Ayman Mohyeldin, "will now be known as the man who traded in his reputation and his self-professed principles to become nothing more than a reactionary Lex Luthor in a MAGA hat."