Elon Musk is not spending $45 million a month to elect former President Donald Trump, though he has created a new super political action committee (PAC) to fund the Republican candidate, the billionaire told conservative commentator Jordan Peterson during an interview Monday evening.
During the interview, which was hosted on Musk’s platform, X, Peterson asked Musk if he had “shocked” himself by donating a substantial amount of money to Trump’s campaign. Musk – who has previously criticized Trump, calling him a “bull in a china shop” – paused to correct the “media.”
“What’s been reported in the media is simply not true,” Musk said. “I am not donating $45 million a month to Trump.”
I’m sorry what? Is he using the distinction between donating to a PAC and a candidate as cover? 🤦🤦♀️🤦♂️
“It’s not for Trump, that’s a lie… It was for the PAC I made”
Fortune: “Why are they lying about poor Elon!?”
This is fucking hilarious. Thanks for confirming.
“I’m not giving him any money. I’m simply putting loads of cash into a piggy bank and then incidentally giving that piggy bank directly to him”
Knowing Elon’s past history with wording, he is probably actually donating $45,999,999.99 or $45,000,000.01 just to say the media reports are not true. He never denied donating money, just disputed that exact figure.
I think you’re all focusing on the wrong part. I didn’t donate $45M, I made an investment that I expect to pay back a lot more. Donating to Trump would indeed be cult of personality, buying a US President to protect me and be my pet is pure Elon.
He wants to take a bite from Boeing and Lockheeds contracts.
My thought as well. Why didn’t Peterson ask more about it, though.
Because he’s not interested in doing any sort of bona fide journalism.
Look what Musk did when Don Lemon asked him not especially challenging questions.
doesn’t subscribe to cult of personality
Well that tracks. Cult leaders don’t really like to acknowledge other cults.
There can be only one
I mean, you make more money as the leader, but have more fun as a follower.
*clears throat*
lol
What does it mean when rats suddenly vacate a ship?
“I haven’t donated $45m”.
He could have donated 50m, so I’d take it with a grain of salt until the fillings are actually public
“I have not donated $45m to Trump (it was donated to the PAC).”
Wasn’t musk the one who tweeted this? Why is he lying saying that media reported something that is not true when the source was himself?
I thought so too, but I just went searching for the source and it appears that everyone gives attribution for this as “according to the WSJ”, and the WSJ attributes it to “people familiar with the matter”. So, no actual statement from Musk that I could find.
That said, I still think he’s likely contributing to a PAC (which makes it technically true that isn’t directly giving to Trump…). I also suspect that it’s very likely he has an agreement with the PAC that they will then spend this money on ads at Twitter, though I have no evidence to back that up.
‘I don’t subscribe to the Cult of Personality, it subscribed to me’
Elon Musk (probably)
Man, I was one of two people I knew whilst in college sounding the alarm about Citizens United, and everyone acted like I was overreacting, that it would get fixed (somehow) because Obama was going to save us all!
Oh fucking well I guess.
Here we a decade plus later, everything is broken, everything is literally on fire (forest fire season was NOT a commonly used term when I grew up), and there is no point in saying I told you so.
I wish I was Dr. Manhattan and could just sit on Mars.
Forest fire season has definitely been around since at least when I was a kid- it kind of depended on where you are, though.
Fires in California definitely were seasonal (as were Australian bush fires,) (I was like seven, but I gotta say, firemen were cool and Aussie firemen that did that thing were even cooler.)(okay it might have been the accent.)
I grew up in Western WA, in and near Seattle.
It used to be extremely rare for a forest fire to have any kind of effect on basically anywhere within 100 miles of Seattle.
Now, that region itself is getting previously unheard of heat domes, and its now basically multiple times per summer that a much larger than normal forest fire in southwest WA, or Oregon or even BC ends up making it so bad that news and the University of WA will tell people to jerry rig makeshift smoke filters out of HVAC filters and a box fan, and to basically not go outside for more than 15 minutes without a mask.
A whole lot of homes and apartments in western WA do not have AC, because it used to be the case that you would get maybe 5 to 10 days, nonconcurrent, above 85. You could just take it easy and have a lazy non productive day.
Now its a solid week, or multiple solid weeks of 90+ temps, and huge numbers of people do not have AC because we did not used to need it.
When I last lived in WA, in a 2.1k apartment, I had to buy my own window AC unit, cover the windows in mylar to reflect the heat and then use black out curtains after that, and also jerry rig the AC unit with an HVAC filter to just barely be able to keep one room below 95 degrees for about a week straight, with the whole room smelling like burning wood.
Oh it’s wide spread now, and much much worse.
The sadly ironic reality is most of the US was a fire ecology. With the total suppression of all wildfires, we’ve been sitting on a powder keg for decades. We’ve known it for decades, and climate change is a giant road flare slowly falling into it.
I was born in cali, and yeah, they had “fire season” there, in Minnesota we didn’t - at least not till recently when things finally got traction. The conversation is entirely different
It’s a Good Thing Republicans and Muskets do their Own Research! Otherwise they might have thought Elon Musk was donating $45MILLION a Month to Trump when Elon Musk said he was donating $45MILLION a Month to Trump!
“Sir if you go full MAGA the liberals won’t buy your cars any more.”
(Though he can still donate all this money to PACs I’m sure and no one will know so by saying this he’s probably just trying to save face and stuff give money to the shit heads.)
That’s already happening.
https://www.theverge.com/24134781/tesla-q1-2024-earnings-sales-market-share-elon-musk
Honestly, at this point, now that he has the biggest golden parachute in history, I doubt he cares about the fate of Tesla.
I’m actually in the market for a new car, and prefer to get an EV, but Tesla is out of the question. Not just because of Musk, mind you, though it does play a big part, but also because they’re hideous and aren’t known for quality.
That last part, is totally because of musk.
The CT, for example was what happens when he rides herd on the engineers designing it. You can see how each version of Tesla got more and more complicated and over engineered and that’s directly because of musk.
bro these guys never spend their own money.
Just like every other one of elon’s promises.
Did his lawyer call him and demand he clarify his comments?
The interview actually had much more interesting content…
