Elon Musk gave £16m to group promoting Trump’s position on abortion
6 December 2024, 17:14
The group, RBG PAC, formed in mid-October and was not revealed until reports were made public this week.
Elon Musk was the sole funder of a super political action committee (PAC) formed less than a month before the US election that focused on advertising aimed at convincing voters that Donald Trump’s stance on abortion was akin to that of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
A group titled RBG PAC, formed in mid-October, received a single contribution of 20.5 million dollars (£16 million) from an entity entitled “Elon Musk Revocable Trust” a week later, according to federal campaign finance reports filed this week.
Because of the short timeline between the donation and Thursday’s reporting deadline, Mr Musk’s affiliation with the group – which he did not talk about publicly – was not revealed until the filings became public.
To improve the TRUE economy, which is output of useful products & services, we need to shift people from low to negative productivity jobs in government to high productivity jobs in the private sector!
This is what really matters at a fundamental level. https://t.co/YIf0cae9Xg
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 5, 2024
In the closing weeks before the November 5 election, the RBG PAC group ran a TV ad noting Mr Trump’s statements that he would not, as president, sign a national abortion ban, with a narrator saying he “does support reasonable exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother”.
Ms Ginsburg believed that the Constitution protected a woman’s right to an abortion, though she suggested in 2012 that the landmark Roe v Wade decision “moved too far too fast”, potentially changing how the debate over abortion rights played out over the ensuing decades.
Mr Trump nominated three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe in 2022. That allowed many conservative-led states to ban or restrict access to abortion.
According to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission, the Musk entity spent nearly all of its money on digital ads, mailers and text messages.
That group’s funding represents a small fraction of the more than 200 million dollars (£157 million) Mr Musk spent in the 2024 election cycle, most of it through his super PAC intended to elect Mr Trump, a signal of the influence wealthy people are angling to wield in US politics and Mr Trump’s incoming administration.
Elon Musk:
“We should not have any international treaties that restrict the freedom of Americans.” pic.twitter.com/qvHGKggHO0
— ELON FACTS (@ElonFactsX) December 5, 2024
The world’s richest man, Mr Musk poured millions into a get-out-the-vote effort to help the former president return to the White House.
He is known politically for having transformed Twitter into X, a platform embraced by Mr Trump’s “Make America Great Again” enthusiasts.
Mr Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, ran ads that warned if people sat out the election, “Kamala and the crazies will win”.
The PAC launched a one million-dollars-a-day voter sweepstakes that landed the group in court before a judge said it was allowed to continue.
Thursday’s filing came as Mr Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy were on Capitol Hill for closed-door meetings with legislators to discuss Mr Trump’s DOGE initiative to dismantle parts of the federal government.
Mr Trump gave the two business titans the nod to head his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a non-governmental task force assigned to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programmes and slash federal regulations as part of his “Save America” agenda for a second term in the White House.
