The best election Elon Musk can buy

Elon Musk appears determined to do to democracy what he did to Twitter: Buy it and then burn it to the ground, while being cheered on by an army of Guys Who Can’t Get Laid on a Bet.

Aside from joining The Former Guy on stage in Pennsylvania and “jumping around like a dipshit,” in the immortal words of VP candidate Tim Walz, Musk has is one of a handful of tech billionaires funding a $100 million conservative Super PAC, is offering $1 million prizes to people in swing states who register to vote and promise to support MAGA issues, and is gleefully creating and spreading disinformation on his Nazi dumpster fire platform, as well as via Facebook and text messages.

And that was all just in the last week.

Musk posted a video of his first $1 million lottery winner, MAGA fan John Dreher, to Xitter on October 19. (As per my usual policy, I’m not linking to anything on that hellsite.) If you watch the video, it appears Dreher is suffering from some cognitive challenges. [1]

Bribing people to register to vote is a federal crime – or at least, it’s supposed to be. (Remember when we had laws and actually enforced them? Good times.) Here’s the relevant statute (52 U.S.C. 10307(c):

“Whoever knowingly or willfully …. pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.” 

Rick Hasen, UCLA Law School political science professor and author of the Election Law Blog, writes: “Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal.”  

Good thing for Musk the Supreme Court has granted blanket immunity to all billionaires not named Gates, Soros, or Swift. 

Disinformation runs deep

Then there’s “Progress 2028.” This entirely bogus website purports to support the Harris campaign, but it deliberately distorts her positions on immigration, guns, healthcare, and LBGTQ rights. It’s designed to mimic Project 2025, the actual blueprint for a fascist takeover of our government, though on a much smaller scale (ie, it’s a one-page website, not a 900-page compendium of horrors).

This bit of spicy bullshit is the work of Building America’s Future, a dark money PAC that has been linked to Musk and other deep-pocketed fans nostalgic for a return to 1939. That’s in addition to the $75 million Musk pledged to America PAC, another beneficiary of the Citizens United gift that keeps on giving to billionaires, which is devoted to get-out-the-vote efforts.

Anna Massoglia of transparency organization Open Secrets has the receipts for this one:

Musk is also behind a group that’s buying Facebook ads and sending out fake texts allegedly on behalf of the Harris campaign, many of which contain anti-semitic and racist dog whistles. Here’s one of the bogus text messages, courtesy of Talking Points Memo.

This is sophisticated stuff. If you didn’t know better, you might actually fall for this crap. And that’s exactly what Musk et al are counting on.

What’s in it for Elon?

Of course, all of this lays bare Elon’s real reason for burning $45 billion of Monopoly money to acquire Twitter. During a single week in September Musk made 171 posts to his platform, with nearly one-third of them containing false or misleading information, according to a study by the New York Times. He’s ordered Xitter’s engineers to force the platform’s algorithms to promote his tweets above all others. And of course, he’s a big fan of deepfake videos that promote his political point of view.

So what does Elon Musk want from Donald Trump? It’s a question more and more people are asking these days. There’s speculation that if (lord help us) the Orange Stain returns to the Oval he’ll be named some kind of anti-regulation czar. I doubt that’s true, mostly because I doubt Musk would want that job. He’s having way too much fun acting like an overgrown adolescent with the keys to Dad’s Jag and his Amex Platinum card. 

I suspect it’s the same thing Donald Trump wants: Unlimited power and complete freedom from accountability. And if we’re not careful – and very very lucky – he might get it.

Have you voted yet? Have your friends and family? How are you maintaining your sanity over the next 13 days? Share your secrets in the comments or email me: [email protected].

[1] I’ll believe those $1 million payouts are real when someone shows me a copy of the deposited check. For now, I’m betting this is all performance art.