The Elon Musk Election

It’s not uncommon for billionaires to support political candidates—in fact, it’s a core feature of U.S. politics—but Elon Musk in the 2024 election cycle is still a bit of an outlier. The billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter) has donated more than $100 million to Trump’s campaign through his recently formed America PAC, is handing out legally questionable daily $1 million rewards to Trump voters in swing states, and has appeared with Trump on the campaign trail on multiple occasions. 

But it is Musk’s $44 billion purchase of X, where he has nearly 203 million followers, that is causing the greatest concern. Musk has turned his own X account into a firehose of false and misleading election claims that have been viewed more than 2 billion times, according to a report on Tuesday by the British American nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Multiple media analyses indicate that the platform as a whole now favors conservative—particularly pro-Trump—voices. 

Musk’s overseas business ties are also worrying some U.S. politicians. Tesla’s biggest factory is in Shanghai, and Starlink (the satellite internet operated by SpaceX) is a key player in Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, even as Musk has previously shared Russian government talking points for ending the war. 

“I’m enormously concerned about his ties to China,” one Democratic lawmaker told journalists in Washington last week, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Those ties were problematic even before Musk’s endorsement of Trump, the lawmaker added, but Musk’s behavior since then—particularly online—adds another layer of anxiety. “He’s got a right to support whoever he wants, but I think we should all be concerned that X has become ground zero for disinformation and misinformation.”