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The Elon Musk Effect: How Donald Trump Benefited from the Backing of a Billionaire | Donald Trump

As Donald Trump announced his “great victory” as the results of the US presidential election were announced, he particularly praised one man who helped catapult him back to the country's top job.

“A star is born, Elon,” he said in a speech in West Palm Beach, Florida, referring to his biggest ally in the presidential race: the billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk.

Musk has indeed played an outsized role in Trump's comeback, not only pumping millions of dollars into Trump's campaign but also acting as a political adviser and promoter, effectively turning his X social media platform into a mouthpiece for Make America Great Again (MAGA).

“The future will be amazing,” Musk wrote on X when it became clear that Trump would return to the White House.

The billionaire's star may actually be rising high under Trump, who has previously hinted that his ally could become “Minister of Cost Cutting” in his Cabinet. Experts have warned that Musk, whose Space

As the dust settles, here's everything you need to know about how the world's richest man helped fuel one of the wildest political comebacks in history. How did Musk use his money and influence to put Trump back on top and why?

How much did Musk donate to Trump's campaign?

To be clear, billionaires played a bigger role than ever before in both the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns. Microsoft's Bill Gates and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg both supported Vice President Kamala Harris. But it was Musk's diverse support for Trump that made the difference.

According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) last month in its final disclosures ahead of Election Day, Musk donated an estimated $132 million to Trump and other Republicans in the run-up to the 2024 election.

Two of the largest donations – $43.6 million and $75 million – went directly to Trump's campaign machine, particularly the America PAC (political action committee) founded by Musk himself.

Controversially, Musk launched a cash raffle in key swing states to registered voters who agreed to sign a petition in support of the First and Second Amendments to the US Constitution, which protect freedom of speech and the right to own arms, respectively to wear, protect, offered the chance to win $1 per day.

“We will randomly award $1 million every day from now until the election to people who sign the petition,” Musk said at a campaign event on October 19.

The move was challenged in a Pennsylvania court after the U.S. Justice Department warned that the group could violate election laws that prohibit paying people from registering to vote. However, judges ruled Monday that the operation could go ahead after Musk's lawyers argued that the winners were vetted speakers and not randomly selected people.

Now Musk is being sued in a class-action lawsuit by voters who claim he convinced them to sign the petition under the false pretense that they had a chance of winning the $1 million. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by Arizona resident Jacqueline McAferty, who also accused Musk of using the giveaway to collect valuable personal information and drive traffic to X.

FEC filings also showed that Musk donated $10 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a PAC tasked with “protecting and expanding the Republican majority in the Senate,” which could potentially help Republicans with this election to successfully regain control of the Senate.

Musk has also reportedly made other unreported donations to Republicans.

How was X used as a MAGA mouthpiece?

As strange as it may seem today, Elon Musk was once considered a liberal and renewable energy advocate who claimed to have voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. This image has changed since 2022 after he took over the social media platform Twitter. now renamed to X.

After promising to transform Twitter into a “politically neutral” forum, Musk fired employees responsible for monitoring disinformation. He also restored more than 62,000 suspended accounts, including accounts belonging to white nationalists and neo-Nazis accused of spreading hate speech and conspiracy theories.

Crucially, he also lifted the ban on Trump's account, which the platform closed following the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021, which many believe Trump encouraged.

Critics said that as the election began, X had effectively become an unofficial platform for the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. The owner himself has been accused of “fanboying” Trump and spreading misinformation among his 200 million followers, his influence amplified by X’s algorithm.

One example was the promotion of a doctored video of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris that included a fake voiceover saying, “I was chosen because I am the ultimate candidate for diversity.” Musk released the video in July with the words “This is amazing” and a laughing emoji again, earning 136 million more views for an article that wasn't marked as a parody.

Misinformation about “illegal aliens” taking part in the election also circulated on X. This is despite studies by both conservative and left-leaning organizations showing that the frequency of the crimes, punishable by up to a year in prison, a fine and possible deportation, was negligible.

On the. “America would then become a deep blue one-party socialist state,” he said in a post in October.

After Trump's televised debate against Harris in September, in which he repeated the false claim that Haitian immigrants in an Ohio town were eating cats and dogs, Musk reposted a meme of a cat holding a sign that read “Kamala hates me.” holding laughing emoji.

Despite his stated commitment to free speech, Musk has suppressed some news stories, such as an article by journalist Ken Klippenstein detailing the vulnerabilities of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, which was allegedly sourced from leaked documents. While the journalist's account was later restored, links to the article were blocked.

A poll conducted in March this year by the Pew Research Center confirmed the platform's growing popularity among Republican supporters, showing that 53 percent thought it was “good for democracy,” about three times the 17 percent who gave the same answer in 2021 gave.

Why did Musk join forces with Trump?

A powerful coalition of their fan bases strengthened the alliance between Trump and Musk.

Not long ago, there was no loss of love between the two. In 2022, Trump called Musk a “bull artist” for allegedly lying when he said he supported him in the 2016 election. Musk responded on Twitter at the time, saying it was “time for Trump to hang up his hat and sail off into the sunset.”

Two years later, the tech tycoon was side by side with Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, wearing a black MAGA hat.

Elon Musk, pictured at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, has become one of Trump's top supporters [File: Evan Vucci/AP Photo]

Musk's shift to the right is sometimes attributed to the government-imposed closure of his Tesla factories during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, he reopened a factory in Fremont, California and declared he was prepared to be arrested, taking a stand against the “bureaucratic blob.”

His shift to the right has since manifested itself in his relationships with anti-regulation leaders such as Argentine President Javier Milei. Musk is also close to international right-wing leaders such as Giorgia Meloni of Italy, Narendra Modi of India and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

However, various American media outlets such as Vanity Fair and the Washington Post have pointed to a deeper motivation triggered by the decision of one of his children to come out as transgender in 2022, cutting ties with Musk and changing their surname to Wilson. In an interview with Jordan Peterson, Musk claimed he was “tricked” into agreeing to her medical treatment and announced his crusade against the “wake mind virus.”

In 2021, Musk moved Tesla's headquarters from Palo Alto, California, in Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, and also moved his residence from California to Texas. In July of this year, Musk announced that he would be joining SpaceX and

How has Musk helped Trump reach young men?

Observers say Musk and Trump, both of whom portray themselves as rule-breaking, non-mainstream “alpha males,” appear to have exploited a widespread sense of male frustration in America that stems in part from the #MeToo movement and the feminist backlash against it “Men”. “Toxic masculinity,” which leaves some men feeling stigmatized and excluded.

John Della Volpe, poll director at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, wrote in the New York Times last month that Trump's play was a “master class in bro-whispering” for the young male electorate. The search for the “bro vote” appears to have paid off: A recent Harvard youth survey found that 35 percent of men between the ages of 18 and 24 surveyed expressed support for Trump, up five percent from a poll from the Year 2020.

It's a sensibility that has found expression in so-called “bro” podcasts like the Joe Rogan Experience. Rogan endorsed Trump on Monday after an interview with Musk. “The great and powerful @elonmusk. If it wasn't for him, we'd be screwed. “He makes, in my opinion, the most compelling pro-Trump argument you will ever hear, and I agree with him on every level,” Rogan said on X.

The message clearly resonated.

Two days later, Trump was elected the 47th President of the United States.

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