Elon Musk’s Super PAC Spent Over $50 Million to Elect Trump

By Donald Shaw and David Moore, Sludge

The super PAC founded by tech billionaire Elon Musk to support the election of Donald Trump has already spent more than $50 million supporting Trump and opposing Democratic nominees Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.

The group, called America PAC, surpassed $50 million in presidential spending on Sept. 6, according to Federal Election Commission data. Its total spending on the presidential race currently stands at $53.9 million, making it the fourth-highest-spending super PAC for a federal election in the 2023-24 cycle.

With initial funding from Musk’s closest associates, including several billionaire Silicon Valley Trump supporters, outside spending group America PAC has been moving quickly to fill the spaces needed for Trump’s reelection campaign. First, the group is writing big checks for door-to-door campaigning, covering the costs of a Trump campaign that lagging behind Harris in direct fundraisingSecond, Musk’s super PAC is massively increasing its spending on digital ads, which are aimed at getting more people to the polls by encouraging Trump supporters to register or request a mail-in ballot.

Musk founded America PAC in May, and it is co-led by Musk’s close political confidant Joe Lonsdale, a venture capitalist and co-founder of Palantir. Lonsdale Enterprise has donated $1 million to the group. Other close friends and associates of Musk have also donated to the group, including investors in his companies, such as former Tesla board member Antonio Gracias, venture capitalist John Hering, billionaire investor Doug Leone and Sequoia Capital general partner Shaun Maguire.

The donors who provided the vast majority of America PAC’s funding remain unknown and will likely remain so until it is required to make public disclosures on October 15. In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk planned to give the group $45 million a month until the election, but the Tesla and SpaceX owner has denied that report, saying on X that he “does make some donations to America PAC, but at a much smaller level.”

The America PAC has also begun spending more than $2 million on digital ads to help Republican candidates in more than a dozen seats in the House of Representatives, according to Business Insider.

Musk has never been a major donor to political groups before. His largest political donations ever were the $50,000 he gave to the McCarthy Victory Fund in 2017 and the $35,800 he gave to the Obama Victory Fund in 2011, according to Federal Election Commission data. Musk’s political giving has crossed both sides of the aisle, but in the past five years or so he has leaned firmly behind the Republican Party. Musk, who has a net worth of $250 billion according to Forbes, has recently embraced the idea of ​​serving in a Trump cabineta proposal Trump made publicly shortly after the oligarch hosted the former president in a friendly interview last month.

According to an August 2 report from CNBCAmerica PAC’s voter registration ads were used to collect data and didn’t actually help some people register. For people in solid blue or red states, the ads’ landing pages would direct them to voter registration pages for their states, but for people in competing states, the web pages would ask them to enter personal information and then simply redirect them to a “thank you” page or back to the home page.

Last month, after election officials in Michigan and North Carolina said they are said to be investigating the PAC’s website practices, America PAC has dropped any mention of voter registration from its homepage and now simply asks visitors to pledge to vote. The landing pages for America PAC’s targeted social media ads now appear to direct people in swing states to government websites where they can begin the voter registration process.

America PAC has ramped up spending in the past month or so, pouring more than $32 million into the presidential race since it resumed spending on Aug. 12 after a midsummer break. All told, canvassing costs have taken up nearly two-thirds of America PAC’s independent expenditures, more than $34 million so far, according to FEC data.

The Trump campaign has reportedly Outsourced to America PAC a large portion of his campaigns and get-out-the-vote operation, a form of coordination between campaigns and ostensibly independent super PACs that was greenlit in an FEC ruling earlier this year. As usual, Musk’s super PAC has not been without its share of reorganization. In mid-July, America PAC shed a large portion of its consultant roster and hired former staffers for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, including former campaign manager Generra Peck, who reportedly become more closely associated with Musk, as well as with former DeSantis adviser and super PAC head Phil Cox.

America PAC has spent more than $7.3 million to date on digital media ads defending Trump and attacking “radical” Kamala Harris, much of it on Meta platforms, where the group has spent nearly $1.7 million, much of it on Facebook, according to data from the company’s Ad Library. As of last week, America PAC was one of the top 10 political advertisers on Meta platforms, where it is targeting ads to users in swing states including Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In sharp contrast to the 2020 presidential election, many of America PAC’s ads promote Trump’s support for mail-in voting and early voting by Republicans.a sudden shift after Trump spent years attacking mail-in votingclaiming without evidence that it would encourage “fraud.” An America PAC ad on Meta reassures users: “President Trump said it best: Voting absentee, early voting, voting on Election Day — are ALL great options to make sure your vote is COUNTED in November!” Another ad on Meta reads: “President Trump is the Badass American we need in the White House. Stop the weakness. Elect Badass American, Donald Trump, in November.” A third ad proclaims: “Donald Trump took a bullet for our country. He needs your vote to save America.”

A trickle of America PAC’s spending is making its way to Musk’s social media platform X: The group has spent about $87,000 on nearly 40 X posts targeting users in swing states including Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, according to data from X’s political ad disclosure. America PAC’s X ads have received more than 19 million impressions.

America PAC also spends millions of dollars on pro-Trump and anti-Harris ads distributed via paid mail, text messages and phone calls. The company also spends about $190,000 on shirts, hats and signs.

The individuals behind only about 17% of the amount America PAC has spent so far on the 2024 elections were revealed in the super PAC’s first quarterly filing with the FEC, which donors giving a total of $8.75 million to the group through June 30. Some of America PAC’s early donors are also among the dozens of billionaires donate to Trump’s campaign groups, with figures like Lonsdale and Maguire with the aim of cultivating a base of MAGA supporters in Silicon Valley.

Other donors to America PAC include Gemini cryptocurrency exchange co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss ($250,000 each), coal company Alliance Resources CEO Joe Craft ($1 million), Jimmy John founder James Liautaud ($1 million), Jack Link CEO Troy Link ($500,000) and PayPal co-founder Kenneth Howery ($1 million). Howery, a member of the “PayPal Mafia” of early employees, previously served as the Trump administration’s ambassador to Sweden. The Winklevoss twins, who recently donated roughly $1 million each in bitcoin to a joint Trump fundraising committee, reportedly attended a fundraiser with Trump and J.D. Vance in San Francisco in June that was hosted by venture capitalist and podcast co-host David Sacks.