WASHINGTON: Elon Musk gave around $75 million to his pro-Donald Trump spending group in the span of three months, federal disclosures showed on Tuesday, underscoring how the billionaire has become crucial to the Republican candidate’s efforts to win the Nov. 5 presidential election.
America PAC, which is focused on turning out voters in closely contested states that could decide the election, spent around $72 million of that in the July-September period, according to disclosures filed to the Federal Election Commission.
That is more than any other pro-Trump super PAC focused on turning out voters. The Trump campaign is broadly reliant on outside groups for canvassing voters, meaning the super PAC founded by Musk — the world’s richest man — plays an outsized role in the razor-thin election between Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris.
Musk, the CEO of electric car manufacturer Tesla, was the sole donor to the group in that period.
Musk, who has said he has voted for Democratic presidential candidates in the past, has taken a sharp turn to the right this election. He endorsed Trump in July and appeared with him at a rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month.
On Wednesday, Musk said in a post on X that he will be “giving a series of talks” throughout Pennsylvania, less than two weeks after his appearance with Trump in the state.
He said people only needed to sign a petition on his America PAC website to attend his talks from “tomorrow night through Monday.”
Reuters reported, quoting a source, last week that Musk planned more campaigning for Trump in Pennsylvania, considered a crucial state for both Trump and his Democratic opponent Harris in the race for the White House.
Musk’s donations to America PAC propel him into the exclusive club of Republican mega donors, a list that also includes banking heir Timothy Mellon and casino billionaire Miriam Adelson.
However, Reuters reported earlier this month that Musk has secretly funded a conservative political group for years, well before his public embrace of Trump.
America PAC declined to comment on the Musk donations. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
America PAC is focused on encouraging Americans who like Trump but don’t always vote to cast ballots this cycle, a high-risk, labor-intensive strategy by the Trump campaign.
The group, which started its work later in the election than other PACs, has encountered some problems with hiring and its contractors. Since July, it has fired two major contractors it has hired to knock on doors.
It has also struggled to hire door knockers in several battleground states in part because by the time the PAC became operational many other canvassing groups had already staffed up, a half-dozen sources briefed on the issues told Reuters.
The group had around $4 million left on hand by the end of September, the filings show.
Separate filings earlier on Tuesday showed that Miriam Adelson, the casino magnate, donated $95 million to another pro-Trump super PAC, Preserve America PAC, in the same period.
Musk gave $75 million to pro-Trump group, becoming a Republican mega donor
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Musk gave $75 million to pro-Trump group, becoming a Republican mega donor
Neighbors of alleged Bondi gunmen shocked by deadly rampage
SYDNEY: Like many people in Sydney, Glenn Nelson spent his Sunday evening watching television coverage of a deadly shooting on the city’s iconic Bondi Beach.
But stepping onto his front porch, flanked by neatly trimmed box hedges, he saw armed police cordoning off the street before raiding the house opposite — home of the two suspects who are alleged to have killed 15 people in Australia’s worst mass shooting in decades.
“I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll catch the rest in the morning,’ the next thing, the drama is out the front door,” he said in an interview on Monday, shortly after mowing his lawn.
Nelson and other neighbors said the family living across the street kept to themselves, but seemed like any other in the suburb of Bonnyrigg, a working-class, well-kept enclave with an ethnically diverse population around 36 km (22 miles) by road from Sydney’s central business district.
Local media named the two suspected gunmen as father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram.
Police have not named the suspects, but they said the older man, 50, was killed at the scene, taking the number of dead to 16, while his 24-year-old son was in a critical condition in hospital.
Police said the son was known to authorities and the father had a firearms license.
The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to a woman on Sunday evening who identified herself as the wife and mother of the suspects.
She said the two men had told her they were going on a fishing trip before heading to Bondi and opening fire on an event celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
“I always see the man and the woman and the son,” said 66-year-old Lemanatua Fatu, who lives across the street.
“They are normal people.”
Until Sunday’s shooting, Bonnyrigg was an otherwise unremarkable neighborhood typical of Sydney’s sprawling Western suburbs.
It has significant Vietnamese and Chinese communities, along with many residents who were born in Iraq, Cambodia and Laos, according to government data.
The town center, a strip mall with a large adjoining car park, is flanked by a mosque, a Buddhist temple and several churches.
“It’s a quiet area, very quiet,” Fatu said. “And people mind their own business, doing their own thing — until now.”
Not much is currently known about the suspects’ backgrounds.
A Facebook post from an Arabic and Qur'an studies institute appearing to show one of the men was removed on Monday and no one answered the door at an address listed for it in the neighboring suburb of Heckenberg.
On Monday afternoon, as police took down their cordon, several people re-entered the house, covering their faces. They made no comment to the media and did not answer the door.
