How Elon Musk changed course to go all out for Trump

Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter, now called X, has drastically shifted its political neutrality. Despite pledges for impartiality, Musk's posts and platform policies now favour Trump and his allies, suppressing opposing views and funding partisan efforts. His $120 million into America PAC supports Trump's campaign, drawing legal scrutiny.

· The Economic Times
Musk and Trump share a platform at a poll rally

Two weeks after making a stunning $44 billion bid to buy Twitter in April 2022, Elon Musk began to lay out a vision for his ownership of the social network. The company's management had become biased in favour of left-wing values, Musk argued, and he would stamp out political partisanship. "For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral," tweeted Musk, the world's richest man.

More than two years later, the network, now known as X, is anything but. Ahead of this week's presidential election, the platform's algorithmically curated feeds and trending topics have become overtly political, echoing the biases of Musk, the platform's most followed account holder and one of former President Donald Trump's most notable supporters. Musk's posts are a stream of grievances, conspiracy theories and partisan misinformation.

The about-face is one of many Musk has undertaken in recent years as he has increasingly embraced Trump and his allies.

Musk has met with fellow billionaires and businesspeople to strategise on how to elect Trump, despite criticising similar elite gatherings last year as akin to "an unelected world government". He has poured nearly $120 million into a fierce effort to support Trump, after criticising other social media billionaires for getting involved in elections. And Musk's platform has suppressed news stories from outlets he sees as biased against Trump, despite his stated commitment to free speech.

Last month, after independent journalist Ken Klippenstein published an article with reportedly hacked material about Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, X moved to stop the circulation of Klippenstein's article and suspended his account. It was reversed only after a user on X asked Musk why the reporter had been suspended.

As X has become more political, its owner has continued to contradict himself on his own role in the presidential election. In March, after the Times reported that he had met with Trump, Musk posted that he was "not donating money to either candidate for US President". (More reporting from the Times showed that by the time of that statement, Musk had already been meeting with other billionaire Republican donors and businesspeople to strategise on how to elect Trump.)

Last year, in a wide-ranging interview with the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Musk spoke out about a series of donations that Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, had made during the 2020 election.

"My understanding is that Zuckerberg spent $400 million in the last election, nominally in a get-out-the-vote campaign, but really fundamentally in support of Democrats," Musk said during the interview, echoing a misleading right-wing talking point. The money-derided by critics including Trump as "Zuckerbucks"-went to two nonprofit organisations that disbursed aid to more than 2,500 election departments dealing with budget shortfalls as they adopted new voting practices during the coronavirus pandemic. The money did not support Democratic candidates.

Since his statement, Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, started his own political action committee, the America PAC, into which he has poured nearly $120 million. Much of that has gone toward funding a canvassing operation to support Trump's campaign in battleground states as well as cash giveaways and a $1 million lottery for potential voters that has come under criticism.

Musk has targeted his efforts at voters themselves, offering those in swing states the chance to win $1 million every day until Election Day if they sign a petition and provide his PAC with their personal information. On Monday last, the district attorney of Philadelphia sued Musk and the America PAC for running an "unlawful lottery" to extract a political pledge. Musk's lawyers have asked that the case be moved to federal court, where a judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania will decide whether to take up the matter or return it to state jurisdiction.

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