Elon Musk to Bet a FORTUNE on GOP for Midterms

**John Johnston** (0:00)
Hi everyone, JJ here. Welcome back to The Lounge. Well, Elon Musk is about to drop a lot of money, a fortune in fact, on the midterm elections, supporting Republicans, it seems. This comes only like a week after he was in an interview with The Economist, saying that he got too into politics. And of course, we all know what happened. I documented it on my pod about the boycotts and the protests, and I'm boycotting it myself. I would never buy a Tesla. But he got so into politics, increasingly far-right politics, which he also denied in that interview or, you know, gaslighting about that it's not far right and so forth. But he's about to drop a lot in the midterms. And the thing is, does he have to drop it?
You know, he joked about it before the election, before he gave it around $277 million to Trump.
You know, when Trump got elected, you know, does he have to? He joked about going to prison if Trump didn't win. Was that actually a joke? And now since then, he's done quite a few things that are arguably illegal, not even arguably, but he's got to be worried about some accountability coming, even though he's the richest person in the world and can fight things legally, really infinitely and infinite bucket of money for legal expenses and then so forth. But is he feeling it? Is he worried that that way, even though he said he went too far into politics, he's going in again. What's this going to do to the popularity of himself and his brands again? It's going to be interesting to see it plays out because if he is in front of the camera, if he's very public about it, I don't think people are going to like it. At least half the people aren't going to like it. So I want to play a little bit of this from The Damage Report. Here's John from The Damage Report talking about this. I haven't placed anything from them for quite a while, but I haven't forgotten. If Elon's going into politics again, we're going to see a lot more of Elon on the politics channels. Anyway, let's get into this.

**John** (1:57)
Elon Musk is back to Medlin Politics yet again. His PAC, America PAC, because he's a very creative man, is going to spend a whole bunch of money getting involved in the midterms. They're going to focus on door knocking, digital advertising, and direct mail aimed at turning out the conservative base for Republicans.

**John Johnston** (2:14)
I wonder what else he'll be getting up to. He's been in court or in legal trouble for doing some dodgy things to do with giving out the million dollar checks in Wisconsin, was it?
No, was it Michigan? I can't even remember where it was now, but he pushes it a lot. He pushes it.

**John** (2:32)
Including voters who typically are less inclined to cast ballots in a non presidential election year. That's sources who are familiar with the PAC. Now, they are refusing to say exactly how much they'll spend because it's going to be a lot of money. And it would probably enrage you towards Elon Musk. It might further turn you against his corporations and he's trying to strike a balance there between destroying our democracy and not destroying Tesla's share price. But he's probably going to spend a lot. Bear in mind, he spent $260 million plus in 2024 But he can do that because he has effectively unlimited money. Because our economy is a joke and the Wall Street is a fantasy.
He could spend $200 million, he could spend $10 billion. What would be the difference?

**John Johnston** (3:15)
That's true. If you're a trillionaire, or it's not a trillionaire anymore, it's come back X trillionaire. But even so, he really has unlimited funds to spend on this. If he really thinks it's important enough to one, keep him out of legal trouble, keep him out of prison, accountability for things that were done in Doge. A lot of people were angry about USAID, what happened there with Doge.
The talk that he did just went in there. This really a private citizen that was employed, one of the richest people in the world and destroyed government departments. So people are annoyed about that. But yet, he's going to do it again, and maybe because as I said, maybe he sees that he has to this time. Of course, he will talk about saving the country and saving the Western world and all that. But really what he's doing is supporting far-right politics and parties all over the world. In France, in Germany, in the UK, meddling in European politics, which was in that. The economist interview, the interviewer really had him up about that too.