The News
Elon Musk is set to join Donald Trump on stage at Madison Square Garden Sunday, underscoring the tech billionaire’s role as a central figure in the 2024 presidential election.
The Tesla CEO has become pivotal to Trump’s re-election campaign since he endorsed the former president in July. Aside from appearances at Trump rallies, Musk has contributed millions to his own pro-Trump PAC and set up get-out-the-vote campaigns in key battlegrounds like Pennsylvania. If Trump wins, the Republican has pledged to give Musk a role in his administration, although the details are unclear.
SIGNALS
Democrats need to rethink their estimation of Musk’s power
As the owner of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk has considerable geopolitical power — his companies have made the US a leader in space exploration and a serious global competitor in electric vehicles, even as other Western countries have lagged behind. “His ability to out-manufacture and out-innovate almost all of his rivals is right out of a comic book movie trope,” economics commentator Noah Smith wrote in his Substack. Musk is especially talented at “gathering, motivating, coordinating, and setting goals for human talent,” yet Democrats have underrated Musk’s influence, Smith argued. Ultimately, Smith wrote, America will always need entrepreneurial figures like him to counter adversaries like China and Russia.
Musk’s contact with Putin draws scrutiny
Since late 2022, Musk has been “in regular contact” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to recent reporting in The Wall Street Journal. The report could raise US national security concerns, given Musk’s security clearance and deep ties to the federal government: NASA depends on SpaceX for most of its missions to some degree, and the company has won billions of dollars worth of government contracts to that end. Speaking in an interview with Semafor on Friday, the space agency’s chief Bill Nelson said that the report “should be investigated,” adding that “if it’s true there have been multiple conversations with Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then that would be concerning.”
Musk’s campaign strategy grows ‘more frenzied’
As the election nears its end, Musk has only grown “more frenzied” in his bid to help Trump get elected, The New York Times wrote. Aside from being Trump’s second-largest individual donor, Musk has taken to hosting his own live events, including a nearly two-hour town hall in Pennsylvania Saturday, in which he took questions from voters and downplayed the violence on Jan. 6. Meanwhile, Musk appeared to have resumed a lottery to give away $1 million a day to swing state voters who sign a petition, despite the Department of Justice warning it could be a crime.