Billionaire provided vast majority of funds to America Pac in winning bid to return Trump to White House
Elon Musk’s super political action committee (Pac) spent about $200m to help elect Donald Trump to a second presidency, according to a person familiar with the group’s spending, funding an effort that set a new standard for how billionaires can influence elections.
The billionaire chief executive officer of Tesla and SpaceX provided the vast majority of the money to America Pac, which focused on low-propensity and first-time voters, according to the Associated Press source, who was not authorized to disclose the figure publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. In turn, as CNBC reported, Musk’s net worth jumped $70bn since Trump’s victory in the 5 November election.
The AP source’s information confirmed the Wall Street Journal’s reporting in July that Musk had committed to spend about $45m monthly to what became the pro-Trump America Pac.
America Pac’s work was aided by a March ruling from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that paved the way for Super Pacs to coordinate their canvassing efforts with campaigns, allowing the Trump campaign to rely on the near-unlimited capital of the nation’s most high-profile billionaire to boost turnout in deep-red parts of the country. That allowed the campaign to spend the money it saved on everything from national ad campaigns to targeted outreach toward demographics Democrats once dominated.
