Highlights
- Billionaire Elon Musk has claimed that he won't donate to Donald Trump or President Joe Biden, purportedly maintaining neutrality in the 2024 race.
- Forbes' oft-richest man owns stakes in Tesla, X, Neuralink, and SpaceX, and asserts he prefers a centrist political approach, despite his views to the contrary.
- The Musk Trump meeting drove interest into Elon's political involvement and history of major party donations.
$200 billion man Elon Musk is officially on the record as saying he will not donate any of his wealth to either Donald Trump (R) or Joe Biden's (D) presidential campaigns, now that Trump has all but solidified the GOP nomination.
Musk took to X (formerly Twitter), the social media platform he bought in 2022 for $43 billion, to pronounce his purported financial neutrality in the 2024 race:
As of March 1st, Musk was ranked as the world's richest man in the world by Forbes real-time wealth tracking list.
However, that title routinely passes back and forth between Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Bezos currently holds it.
Musk's wealth can be broken down into the stakes he owns in each of his companies, including Tesla, X, and Neuralink:
- Musk's Tesla Ownership Stake: 13 percent ($83 billion);
- Musk's Twitter/X Ownership Stake: 79 percent ($8.37 billion);
- Musk's Other Known Assets: Space Exploration Technologies ($71.2 billion private asset), The Boring Company ($3.33 billion private asset), Neuralink ($2.07 billion private asset).
A meeting between Musk and Trump in Palm Beach in early March prompted interest in Musk's political involvement — let's break it down.
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Reports show that Elon Musk has donated more money to Republicans than to Democrats over the past 20 years, albeit not by much relative to his total spend.
According to nonprofit watchdog OpenSecrets.com, Musk has contributed over $574,500 to Republican "politicians, parties, PACs, and referendum campaigns," and $542,000 to Democratic entities.
In total, Musk has made $1.2 million in overall donations, with a $32,500 difference in favor of Republican political entities.
Although Republicans have benefited the most from Musk's wealth, the entrepreneur has never described himself as a "conservative."
In 2018 – prior to his acquisition of Twitter – Musk responded to a user's speculative musings about his political leanings, and asserted:
... To be clear, I am not a conservative. Am registered independent & politically moderate. Doesn’t mean I’m moderate about all issues.
Humanitarian issues are extremely important to me & I don’t understand why they are not important to everyone.
Musk has also claimed he favors neither "the left" nor "the right," maintaining he prefers a "centrist" approach to politics.
Back in 2022, he made a similar statement, posting:
"While it’s true that I’ve been under unfair & misleading attack for some time by leading Democrats, my motivation here is for centrist governance, which matches the interests of most Americans."
Musk's biggest single donation was $50,000, to former Obama chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel's re-election campaign in Chicago's mayoral race in 2015; Emanuel currently serves as the US ambassador to Japan under the Biden administration.
Although Musk himself routinely claims to be a "centrist," he has widely been viewed as "moving to the right" in recent years, and his handling of Twitter post-acquisition has been controversial for related reasons.
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On March 5th, the New York Times reported that Trump hosted Musk at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach over the previous weekend, presumably in a bid to lighten Musk's wallet vis-à-vis campaign donations.
The Times reported:
"Donald Trump, who is urgently seeking a cash infusion to aid his presidential campaign, met on Sunday [March 3rd] in Palm Beach, Fla., with Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, and a few wealthy Republican donors, according to three people briefed on the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private discussion.
"Mr. Trump and his team are working to find additional major donors to shore up his finances as he heads into an expected general election against President Biden. Mr. Trump has praised Mr. Musk to allies and hopes to have a one-on-one meeting with the billionaire soon, according to a person who has discussed the matter with Mr. Trump."
Federal Elections Commission (FEC) filings indicate that Biden (the incumbent) currently has a $41 million cash advantage over Trump.
Musk's interactions with Trump in recent years have been controversial; in January 2021, former President Trump's Twitter account was officially deactivated following the events of January 6th (as Trump's tweets on that day were integral to its events).
Musk controversially reinstated Trump's account after conducting a "poll" on Twitter, but Trump has eschewed posting there in favor of his own platform, Truth Social.
In 2023, Musk told former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson that he had voted for Biden in the 2020 election, adding that he's not a "fan" of the President:
I didn’t vote for Donald Trump. I actually voted for Biden.
Not saying I’m a huge fan of Biden, because I would think that would probably be inaccurate [to say].
Nevertheless, Musk has a tendency to "tip his hand" with respect to his true political leanings — typically via Twitter/X.
One fairly recent example occurred on March 5th, when Musk accused Biden of "treason" — and of failing to properly monitor the country's southern border with Mexico, a talking point widely considered to be "partisan" in the US:
Finally, Musk is also known for changing his mind on a whim (and tweeting about it immediately).
As such, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that Musk will "change his mind," and throw his support (and his cash) behind one of the two candidates before November's general election rolls around.
Although the FEC imposes limits on direct donations to individual campaigns, PACs and Super PACs are another route for the very wealthy (like Musk) to evade donation caps.
At press time, Musk had 243 days and counting to make a decision, one that could have the power to sway the election.
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