Elon Musk gives $75 million to pro-Trump PAC

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has quickly change into certainly one of Donald Trump‘s high political donors, and he’s now rising as one of many Republican presidential nominee’s most seen surrogates.

Musk, the world’s richest man, has given almost $75 million to America PAC, the tremendous political motion committee he created earlier this yr largely to again Trump, new Federal Election Commission filings reveal. Practically $72 million of that cash has already been spent, the disclosure report reveals.

The group’s massive haul got here totally through the third quarter, between July and September. Musk is the one contributor listed throughout that interval.

The PAC, which was fashioned in late Might, studies having spent a complete of $102 million on the presidential race thus far, FEC filings present.

Not like most tremendous PACs, nonetheless, America PAC isn’t spending its cash to order costly tv air time to run advertisements. As an alternative, the group’s filings present that it’s paying canvassers and funding unsolicited mail, texts and cellphone banking.

I find Elon Musk's foray into politics 'really off-putting', says Musk biographer Walter Isaacson

In the meantime, Musk introduced in a single day on X, the social media web site he purchased for $44 billion in 2022, that he’ll embark on a multiday talking tour by way of Pennsylvania, the all-important presidential swing state.

“Tomorrow night time by way of Monday, I shall be giving a sequence of talks all through Pennsylvania,” Musk wrote at 12:26 a.m. ET on Wednesday.

“If you would like to attend certainly one of my talks, there is no attendance payment. You simply have to have signed our petition supporting free speech & proper to bear arms & have voted on this election,” he wrote.

Musk added in a comply with up: “To make clear, you want have voted in Pennsylvania.”

That petition requires signers present private contact data, together with their full names, cellphone numbers, electronic mail addresses and mailing addresses. That voter data is extraordinarily helpful to campaigns and political teams, who use it to hone their promoting and get-out-the-vote efforts.

Additional particulars in regards to the occasions weren’t instantly clear. Emails to Musk and his associates weren’t instantly returned.

The pair of headlines underscore Musk’s shift to the political proper and his additional entrenchment in Trump’s bid to defeat Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

Musk publicly endorsed Trump on July 13, minutes after the previous president survived an assassination try at a marketing campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

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When Trump returned to that web site for an additional rally in early October, Musk joined him on stage sporting a black “Make America Nice Once more” hat and enthusiastically declared himself to be “Darkish MAGA.”

In an interview final week on former Fox Information opinion host Tucker Carlson’s present on X, Musk mentioned that he created America PAC “actually to assist the core values that I consider in.”

He named plenty of broad phrases such free speech, protected cities and “self safety,” calling them “very apparent centrist positions.”

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