How Bad Will Anti-Union Zealot Elon Musk’s Support for Trump Hurt Republicans?

Who remembers Hearst’s Jihad against FDR in 1936?

William Randolph Heart was born into great wealth, but quit his studies – he was even expelled – to run his father’s newspaper, the San Francisco Examinerin 1887. The master of yellow journalism, he built the largest newspaper and magazine publishing house in the world.

His father was an appointed U.S. Senator (a Democrat from California), and William wanted to follow him into politics. He was twice elected to Congress from NYC, but was defeated when he ran for President (1904), Mayor of New York (1905 and 1909), Governor of New York in 1906, and U.S. Senate in 1922. At first he maintained the appearance of a progressive Democrat, but he reverted to mainstream conservatism as he grew older and became a full-fledged Nazi when Hitler took power in Germany. He even ordered his journalists to cover the Nazis favorably. His newspapers published columns by Hitler, Goring, and Mussolini, and he went to Germany to interview Hitler himself. Journalists who refused to give fascism a favorable slant in their reporting were fired.

He opposed Roosevelt’s presidential candidacy in 1932, seeing him as a socialist, but he opted for lukewarm support after Roosevelt won the nomination. That lasted for a year, and he quickly became the most prominent right-wing FDR hater in America, especially after he learned that the New Deal would mean higher taxes for the country’s wealthiest oligarchs, whereupon Roosevelt changed from a simple socialist to a full-fledged communist.

In 1936, Hearst was all for Republican candidate Alf Landon. All of his media properties were beating Roosevelt daily. The result was a landslide for FDR, 60.8% to 36.6%, with Roosevelt winning every state except Maine and Vermont. Why bring this up now? History professor David Nasaw wrote the definitive book on Hearst, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (2000) and recently compared Hearst’s jihad against Roosevelt to Elon Musk’s counterproductive campaign against Kamala, predicting that Musk will hurt Trump as much as Hearst hurt Landon.

Seth Harris, a former labor adviser to President Joe Biden and a senior fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University, said he thinks Trump is trying to be ambiguous on the issue of unions, a goal he said is now much harder to achieve.

“Elon Musk created the opportunity that Donald Trump seized to expose themselves as rabidly anti-unionand he did so by praising Elon Musk’s anti-union and union-busting stance and endorsing the idea of illegally firing striking workers,” he said.

Harris, who is not related to Kamala Harris, said he sees Musk’s endorsement as a negative.

“Nobody sees Elon Musk as a voice of the middle class,” he said. “Musk is a predatory corporate executive who did everything he could to destroy the organizing efforts at Tesla and also at SpaceX.”

David Nasaw, the author of books on business magnates such as William Randolph Hearst and Andrew Carnegie, questioned Musk’s ability to influence voters: “Even those who think he’s a genius in AI and technology and space travel, that doesn’t translate to presidential campaigns.”

“I try to think about the demographics that are going to be affected by Musk repeating Trump’s attacks,” he added. “If they don’t believe Trump, are they suddenly going to be on his side because Musk says he’s right?”

Nasaw said he sees a parallel with Hearst, the newspaper and radio baron who tried and failed in 1936 and 1940 to defeat President Franklin D. Roosevelt by using his media empire to stoke opposition. Musk signaled similar aspirations in 2022 when he bought X, and he regularly uses the app to attack Harris and Biden.

“When it came to elections, nobody really trusted Hearst and there was no reason to trust Hearst. I think the same goes for Musk,” he said.

“There was once a legion of Musk bros who hung on his every word — who believed he was not just a genius, but a genius who was dedicated to saving the planet,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the case anymore.”

During the time Musk failed to make friends and influence people, billions of dollars lost for the people he convinced to invest in Twitter. Faiz Siddiqui reported that “Under Musk, Twitter’s valuation has plummeted, as Musk has acknowledged, leaving it worth just $1,000. half of what he paid. Since late last year, Fidelity has consistently valued Twitter’s stake in one of its funds at about 70 percent below its purchase price… Figures released Friday show that Fidelity now values that stake about 72 percent less than when Musk acquired Twitter, taking the company’s total stake from a valuation of about $316 million to $88 million… (T)he eight largest initial investments reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or otherwise made public are worth about $5 billion less than when Musk bought Twitter. His and his partners’ total stake has plummeted $24 billion in value — an evaporation of wealth that has few parallels outside the realm of economic or industry crashes, or devastating corporate scandals.”

“Elon has lost a tremendous amount of equity since he bought Twitter,” said Ross Gerber, who said he has less than $1 million invested, a stake he now considers worthless.

“For the people who have invested in him in any amount,” Gerber said, “…it’s not a fun conversation to have to explain to people how he lost so much money.”

Among top investors, (Twitter founder Jack) Dorsey, whose stake is estimated to have lost $720 million, has made his displeasure known. Last year he said Musk shouldn’t have bought Twitter at all, post on social media that he did not think Musk “acted promptly when he realized his timing was bad.”

“It all went wrong,” Dorsey said.

… Because Musk turned Twitter into a private company, it’s hard to know its current valuation. But some things about the financial picture are clear: Advertisers, the site’s main source of revenue, fled after controversies, some of which Musk himself had caused. Some advertisers were also put off by his decision to undermine content moderation while reinstating thousands of accounts that had previously been suspended for violating the site’s rules.

The deal has also come under scrutiny. The SEC has an active fraud investigation into Musk’s purchase of the site, examining his early accumulation of Twitter shares without disclosing his investment — a move that could have hurt the stock price. Some investors have been served with subpoenas as part of the probe.

These are the losses for the largest shareholders, mainly far-right criminal billionaires:

Elon Musk – Down $24.12 Billion
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal (and Kingdom Holding Co.) – Down $1.3 Billion
Jack Dorsey – $720 Million Loss
Larry Ellison – $720 Million Loss
Sequoia Capital – Down $576 Million
Vy Capital – Down $504 Million
Binance – Down $360 Million
Andreessen Horowitz – Down $360 Million
Qatar Investment Authority – Down $270 Million

Crypto criminal operation Binance, complicit in the financing of terrorism, Russia’s war on Ukraine, Hamas’ attack on Israel, and numerous drug cartels, is under investigation by multiple governments and has been convicted in the US for Bank Secrecy Act violations, money laundering, illicit money transmission, and sanctions. As part of the plea agreement, the company agreed to pay $4 billion in fines and founder Changpeng Zhao, Canada’s richest citizen, stepped down as CEO with a $50 million fine. Last April, Zhao was sentenced to 4 months in prison on money laundering charges as part of a sweetheart plea agreement. He is currently an inmate of the Long Beach Residential Reentry Management field office. Binance had invested half a billion dollars in Twitter and Zhao, then CEO, tweetedin May 2022: “We’re excited to help Elon realize a new vision for Twitter.”