![\"695f86a8434aa9858befc079e3c8311f\"](\"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/695f86a8434aa9858befc079e3c8311f.png\" "\\"695f86a8434aa9858befc079e3c8311f\\"")
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Elon Musk\u2019s super PAC spent around $200 million to help elect\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a><\/span>, according to a person familiar with the group\u2019s spending, funding an effort that set a new standard for how billionaires can influence elections.<\/p>\n The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO provided the vast majority of the money to America PAC, which focused on low-propensity and first-time voters, according to the person, who was not authorized to disclose the figure publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n America PAC\u2019s work was aided by\u00a0a March ruling<\/a><\/span> from the Federal Election Commission that paved the way for super PACs to coordinate their canvassing efforts with campaigns, allowing the Trump campaign to rely on the near-unlimited money of the nation\u2019s most high-profile billionaire to boost turnout in deep-red parts of the country. That allowed the campaign to spend the money they saved on everything from national ad campaigns to targeted outreach toward demographics Democrats once dominated.<\/p>\n The plan worked for both sides. Trump saw key turnout surges in battleground states, and at the end of the campaign the president-elect credited Musk\u2019s role in the race. \u201cWe have a new star,\u201d Trump said at his election night party in Florida. \u201cA star is born \u2014 Elon!\u201d<\/p>\n Blair worked as the main bridge between the Trump operation and groups like America PAC \u2014 a far cry from the early days of super PACs having to decide their strategy without communicating officially with the campaigns they were backing.<\/p>\n \u201cBy conserving hard dollars, we were able to go wider and deeper on paid voter contact and advertising programs,\u201d Blair said. That, he added, included broad ad campaigns aimed at a national audience, as well as \u2014 critically \u2014 more targeted campaigns looking to boost turnout among Black and Latino men, two areas where Trump saw sweeping gains in 2024.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t just Musk\u2019s money that helped Trump. The billionaire businessman became one of Trump\u2019s highest-profile surrogates in the final months of the campaign, often joining the former president onstage. His support gave Trump a clear opening into the universe of younger men who look up to Musk.<\/p>\n Trump also benefited from Musk\u2019s ownership of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and the company\u2019s work to end many of the rules that hampered Trump before he was kicked off in 2021. Like many conservatives, Musk is a fierce critic of social media efforts to counter disinformation, arguing that those efforts amount to pro-government censorship.<\/p>\n Musk is now expected to play a key role in a second Trump administration. The president-elect has said he will place Musk, whose rocket company works with the Defense Department and intelligence agencies, in charge of a new government efficiency commission.<\/p>\n The work between the Trump campaign and America PAC has potentially longer-lasting implications.<\/p>\n It could yield a wholesale shift in the way presidential races are run, overturning longstanding conventional wisdom about campaigns lacking total control of their field program, the impact billionaires can have in politics and the effectiveness of paid canvassing operations.<\/p>\n One reason for skepticism is that this model had failed spectacularly for past campaigns, most notably during Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 run in the 2024 Republican presidential primary against Trump.<\/p>\n DeSantis, more than any other candidate in the primary, relied on an outside group to buttress his campaign. The group, Never Back Down, was\u00a0beset by internal issues<\/a><\/span>, and despite spending $130 million to tout the Florida governor, it was swamped by Trump and his campaign operation in Iowa.<\/p>\n One of the most persistent issues, however, was the\u00a0blurring of lines around what is legally permissible<\/a><\/span> between the campaign and the outside group, an issue that worried some within the governor\u2019s official campaign.<\/p>\n That, however, was before the FEC ruling, meaning Trump and Musk\u2019s group were operating in an entirely different universe than a few months earlier during the primary.<\/p>\n The ruling \u201callowed a much more direct line of communication regarding canvassing,\u201d Blair said. \u201cThat is a real difference and a critical difference.\u201d<\/p>\n Musk\u2019s outside group was\u00a0founded<\/a><\/span>\u00a0in May, but it wasn\u2019t until Musk endorsed Trump in July, after the former president survived an assassination attempt, that the group more clearly began its turnout work. A week later, in an interview with a conservative podcaster, Musk acknowledged the new committee and\u00a0a host of top Republican operatives<\/a><\/span>\u00a0with ties to DeSantis joined the effort.<\/p>\n The group ran ads that warned if people sat out the election, \u201cKamala and the crazies will win.\u201d The highest-profile part of America PAC\u2019s work was a\u00a0$1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes<\/a><\/span> that landed the group in court before a judge said it was allowed to continue. The sweepstakes and subsequent court case drew considerable attention, but much of America PAC\u2019s work happened under the radar.<\/p>\n Door knocking was arguably America PAC\u2019s most impactful work, with Trump experiencing boosts in turnout in key rural areas in battleground states. The work, however, was not without controversy.<\/p>\n A\u00a0report from The Guardian<\/a><\/span>\u00a0found America PAC\u2019s efforts were rife with paid canvassers faking their work and saying they had knocked on doors that they had not visited. Multiple\u00a0reports from Wired<\/a><\/span>\u00a0alleged that some of those paid canvassers worked in poor conditions, including riding in the back of a rented U-Haul van and facing threats to meet unfeasible quotas. Canvassers\u00a0were fired<\/a><\/span>\u00a0after the Wired report, leading to\u00a0a lawsuit against America PAC<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for America PAC declined to comment on the record for this story.<\/p>\n Musk, meanwhile, indicated in an election night conversation on X that his PAC will stay involved in politics, \u201cpreparing for the midterms and any intermediate elections, as well as looking at elections at the District Attorney and sort of judicial levels.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Elon Musk\u2019s super PAC spent around $200 million to help elect\u00a0Donald Trump, according to a person familiar with the group\u2019s spending, funding an effort that set a new standard for… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[260,257],"tags":[1049,864,1050],"views":453,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3141"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3143,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3141\/revisions\/3143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n