All posts tagged "elon musk"

World's wealthiest man launches massive cash attack on vulnerable red state voting system

Elon Musk is throwing money at a midterm state ballot measure that would overhaul its voting system, according to local reporting.

Musk has already put $1.5 million towards supporting a ballot measure in Alaska that would repeal the state's ranked-choice voting system, the Anchorage Daily News reported. Musk has already said he plans to spend $100 million across midterm states this year, raising alarms among critics.

Alaska's Ballot Measure 2 will appear on the state's November ballot. It would repeal not only ranked-choice voting but also open primaries and certain campaign finance laws as well. It would revert Alaska to a closed partisan primary and a pick-one general election.

"It's hard to even put into words the gratitude that we feel that these titans of industry would show interest in our small state," Judy Eledge, the chair of the group leading the campaign to overhaul Alaska's voting system, said in a statement.

According to a state report reviewed by the Anchorage Daily News, Musk donated to the Aurora Action Network, a Wisconsin-based political action committee trying to undo voting laws passed by Alaska voters in 2020.

The Aurora Action Network has also taken donations from billionaire megadonors such as Dick Uihlein, Jeff Yass, Timothy Mellon, and Jeffery Hildebrand, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

The $1.5 million from Musk makes up a "sizable" share of the repeal campaign's fundraising so far and "could prove pivotal for the future of Alaska's elections," The Daily News warned. A group opposing the ballot measure has the cash advantage, however.

The campaign finance laws targeted by Ballot Measure 2 allow Alaska voters to know when megadonors like Musk give money to campaigns in their state, The Daily News reported.

Alaska is a state where Democrats are hoping to gain a Senate seat in the upcoming midterms, as they're trying to beat Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK). Sen. Lisa Murkowski has also been known to break ranks with the GOP and against Trump.

'Five-alarm fire': ex-GOP strategist rattled by who's calling out Musk's midterm spending

A former GOP strategist was spooked by who he saw calling out Elon Musk's midterm spending, saying it's a telling sign.

During an episode of The Bulwark Daily, Tim Miller and The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel talked about the political influence of wealthy tech figures, and at one point, focused in on Musk's reportedly dumping more than $100 million across midterm states like Maine to benefit Republicans. However, Miller was especially worried after seeing that former GOP Sen. Mitt Romney sounded the alarm on Musk.

Miller mentioned that he saw a clip where Romney called out Musk during an interview with McKay Coppins, a staff writer with The Atlantic who wrote a 2023 Romney biography.

"He's looking at McKay Coppins. He's like, 'The Elon thing's a little too far,'" Miller explained. "He's like, 'This guy who has all these government contracts, and he has this unimaginable wealth, and it's like no sweat off his back at all to spend a couple billion to influence these races, and then he gets better deals.'"

Although Miller shared Romney's concerns about Musk's spending, he said, "If Mitt is concerned about this, like, I feel like that should be a five-alarm fire to everybody about the scale of what we're talking about here." Miller explained that Romney's warning was especially revealing because of the former GOP presidential nominee's reputation.

"Mitt Romney is the guy that was on the Iowa soapbox, being like, 'Corporations are people, my friends,'" Miller said. "After Citizens United, that is Mitt Romney, rich private equity guy that wanted unlimited spending."

Warzel agreed with Miller, saying, "It's crazy! When you've lost Mitt Romney," and similarly cautioned that Musk has "always kind of operated as if he's above the law, but it is a type of power and influence that we actually don't have a historical parallel to, so we don't know how to constrain it, deal with it, what is even possible."

'A moron and a liar': Elon Musk smacked with brutal fact check over 'nonsense' X posts

MAGA tech billionaire Elon Musk was fact-checked during an interview, and online critics reacted by piling on humiliation.

During an interview with The Economist, a British news outlet, Musk faced scrutiny of his X posts as an interviewer explained how he mischaracterized the United Kingdom.

"You have close to 250 million followers on X. You say things like 'civil war in Britain is inevitable. Just a question of when.'" The interviewer pointed out before asking Musk when he last came to the UK. Musk said it had been "a few years ago."

"Exactly. I live there. That is nonsense," the interviewer said. "The numbers also disprove what you say. London is a much safer city than any city in the U.S. You have painted Europe and the UK as overrun with terrifying Muslim immigrants."

Online commentators followed suit and went after Musk in their reactions on his own platform, X.

"This man is a moron and a liar," progressive political commentator Wajahat Ali wrote. "It's sad you chuds worship him."

"This is what he does," posted tech and political analyst Jim Stewartson. "He goes off for months about a Black actress, sends ICE after Somalis in Minneapolis, and literally organizes violence with fascist Tommy Robinson in the UK —and then denies it. Same thing as his salute."

"Elon Musk accuses someone else of living in a 'cloistered existence,'" commented political podcaster Tommy Vietor.

"E M is one of those ultra-wealthy persons who, involving themselves in what might be called incendiary politics," author Joyce Carol Oates posted. "I.E. the gleeful poking & goading of others to divisive violence in which they would not personally participate."

Elon Musk's voter cash giveaway stunt 'likely' broke the law: report

A bipartisan elections panel found that billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk "likely broke Wisconsin law" when he gave $1 million checks to voters in last year's Supreme Court election, according to The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted 5-1 to hand the case to prosecutors, who now have 40 days to decide whether the Tesla CEO faces criminal charges for election bribery.

Musk and his allies spent at least $20 million trying to install conservative judge Brad Schimel — only to watch him lose by 10 percentage points. The total spending for the election topped $100 million, the priciest judicial race America has ever seen.

Musk's attorneys have insisted the giveaways were pure free speech, a "grassroots" crusade against so-called "activist judges." But Wisconsin regulators were not buying it.

This wasn't the first time Musk had dropped his checkbook into politics. He ran a similar $1-million-a-day petition scheme during the 2024 presidential race.

Christopher Nolan couldn't care less about MAGA fury over film 'The Odyssey': 'Irrelevant'

Hollywood blockbuster director Christopher Nolan showed he's unbothered by the MAGA uproar about his new movie with his latest comments.

MAGA has been upset about Nolan's casting choices for his adaptation of the ancient Greek epic, "The Odyssey," including Lupita Nyong'o, whose parents are Kenyan, as Helen of Troy, and transgender actor Elliot Page, who was erroneously speculated to be playing Achilles.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Nolan dismissed the backlash as "irrelevant," adding that it "comes with the territory." An article by Variety noted that even prominent right-wing voices like X owner and former Trump aide Elon Musk and conservative commentator Matt Walsh had been vocal critics.

"Look, these conversations that happen before people see the film — they’re always irrelevant," Nolan told The Telegraph. "Because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet."

Having directed three Batman films, Nolan said that he knew that an adaptation of "The Odyssey" had the potential of igniting strong opinions.

"Remember, I spent ten years of my life dealing with Batman," he said, "When I came on '[Batman] Begins,' writers and artists had been working on this beloved character for almost 65 years, and a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents. And what I learnt over time on my trilogy is you can't worry about any of that at all."

Nolan said that the main task in those kinds of adaptations is to "honor the original text by interpreting it the strongest way you personally can."

He added, "All I can do is make the best film I possibly can in the most sincere way."

Pro-Trump group has plans for a robotic lunar cross — and Elon Musk holds the key: report

A Trump-aligned religious group wants to plant a cross on the Moon with Elon Musk's help, according to a new report.

The Cross on the Moon Coalition, a Christian group that partnered with Trump's Freedom 250, wants a robotic cross to unfold from a lunar lander by 2030, but it needs a major funding source, according to Talking Points Memo.

The coalition's founder, Justin Park, said in an interview with the Catholic Messenger, a church-backed publication in Iowa, that the endeavor will cost more than a million dollars, and evangelizing former Trump White House aide and billionaire space enthusiast Elon Musk is part of the plan.

"The idea is really to find a big space advocate who hasn't found the Lord yet," Park told the Catholic Messenger. "Ideally, we would want to convert someone like Elon Musk. The world would just be a whole lot better if we could evangelize Musk and then make him into an evangelist."

Park told TPM in an email that the Cross on the Moon Coalition is "actively fund-raising and working towards evangelizing the tech community," and "reaching Elon and others is an ongoing process that our team works on and prays for every day."

According to TPM, the coalition states that it's on "a spiritual mission to send a cross to the lunar surface to consecrate the heavens and remind humanity that God is the King of the universe."

The group has created animations and images showing how a robotic cross can unfold from a lunar lander, and hopes to make "millions" of miniature Moon cross landers to give to "believers around the world," according to TPM, citing the coalition's website.

Park told TPM that the coalition is "definitely aligned with Trump's efforts to bring more prayer to America," and that he "volunteered at multiple Freedom 250 events."

Nobel winner delivers scathing Musk takedown: 'Blood of millions of children on his hands'

A Nobel laureate held the world's richest man Elon Musk responsible for the deaths of millions of children in a scathing takedown.

Renowned economist Paul Krugman called Musk "a horrible, terrible person" in a recent episode of his podcast. Krugman mostly focused on Musk's cuts to USAID while in the Trump administration.

"For most of last year, Elon Musk was the second most powerful man in America," Krugman explained. "He was running a large part of the government's budget, and during that time, he established a track record of evil incompetence."

Musk "fed USAID to the wood chipper," and "more or less personally set out to destroy this aid agency, set out to cut off healthcare, nutritional assistance, just basic necessities of life for millions and millions of extremely desperate people," Krugman said, adding that "he did so callously, carelessly."

Krugman continued, saying, "I mean, really evil and really incompetent on enormous scales, and why aren't people talking about it more?"

USAID was "the principal channel for aid to the most desperate, poorest people in the world," Krugman continued. Cuts by Musk have "led to millions of unnecessary deaths, including millions of children," Krugman added, saying the point was proven by studies, health models, and "field evidence of widespread death as a result of the cancellation."

He described Musk as "quite evil," and "very much like Trump, somebody who can dish it out, but can't take it, can't even handle the kind of criticism that any public figure should expect to receive," Krugman said.

On Holding Elon Musk Accountable by Paul Krugman

Why aren't we talking more about DOGE?

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HBO's bombshell Musk doc inching closer to release — and legal threats are already looming

Legendary filmmaker Alex Gibney has been quietly finishing a new HBO documentary about Elon Musk, but legal experts have concerns that "deep-pocketed pushback" could stall the project — and others, according to a new report from Status.

Brian Lowry, media columnist and critic, described how Musk has threatened to drag Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) into court after the lawmaker's "assertion that the USAID cuts he engineered while overseeing DOGE for the Trump administration will cause millions of deaths." And with Academy Award-winning Gibney's upcoming documentary, executives could get cold feet.

"Gibney, the director behind memorable examinations of figures like Julian Assange, Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes, and Steve Jobs, declined an interview request, but a spokesperson confirmed he’s currently in postproduction on the film, which Bleecker Street agreed to distribute theatrically last year, before the project lands on the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned network," Lowry wrote.

"Needless to say, taking on Musk is a daunting prospect, and threatens to be complicated by the fact WBD is in the process of being acquired by David Ellison-controlled Paramount," Lowry wrote. "Facing such deep-pocketed subjects, the mere threat of lawsuits can send a chill up the spine of even relatively formidable parties. And as legal experts tell Status, with movies and documentaries on the runway tackling the likes of Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, there’s legitimate concern those backbones will be tested."

Elon Musk panics as DOGE-cut bodies start piling up: 'He's in damage control mode'

Trillionaire Elon Musk spent Monday night posting and re-sharing posts online in an apparent effort to defend his record spearheading massive cuts to U.S. foreign aid – which reporting increasingly suggests may end up causing millions of preventable deaths – and was subsequently hammered by critics.

“Musk killed millions by abruptly stopping food and medical supply shipments,” wrote Nick Mark, a podcast host and Washington-based physician.

“At the time he gleefully celebrated ‘feeding [the U.S. Agency for International Development] (USAID) to the woodchipper’ by waving a chainsaw around high on ketamine. Now he’s in damage control mode. This is his legacy. Don’t let him off the hook.”

Over the weekend, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) accused Musk of potentially causing more than 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 due to the U.S. foreign aid cuts he spearheaded while leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk called Khanna a “liar,” said he “should be in prison” and threatened to sue him.

Several deaths have already been attributed to the USAID cuts.

Through multiple posts Monday, Musk continued to deny that the U.S. foreign aid cuts he spearheaded had caused even a single death.

“There is not even a single dead child!” Musk wrote in a social media post on X. “If there were, it would be worldwide headline news!”

Musk oversaw around $60 billion in cuts to U.S. foreign aid while working with the Trump administration, leaving “few surviving” USAID projects in his wake. Jeremy Konyndyk, a humanitarian policy expert, was quick to correct the record regarding Musk’s denials.

“This is some wild backpedaling bulls--- from Elon,” Konyndyk wrote in a social media post on X. “DOGE clear-cut (more than) 80% of USAID programs without assessing what harms would ensue. And when USAID staff tried to flag those harms, they were forced out.”

'God help us': Ex-GOP operative warns of 'incandescent' signal America is in decline

Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt said that Elon Musk — the world's first trillionaire — is "a danger to every single American," in a video on Friday.

The Lincoln Project co-founder called the SpaceX leader and Trump administration ally "a Nazi" and raised concerns about his influence on American and worldwide political extremism. Schmidt called Musk a non-state actor, "a nation state all unto himself, and that nation state has managed to take control of the American space program."

He warned that this could seriously harm humanity, and specifically Americans.

"He's an extreme man, and now he's a trillionaire. And that is moral failure of American politics, of the two parties, it is an incandescent signal of the corruption of the age," Schmidt said. "Elon Musk is a most dangerous man."

"And don't ever forget that when he delivered this salute in a state of ecstasy, he made himself known for all time, to everybody, for what he is at his core — which is a Nazi — and that is who has become the world's first trillionaire," Schmidt said. "God help us all."