Elon Musk on Wednesday announced that he will not be donating to either the Democratic or Republican candidates in the 2024 presidential election.
“Just to be super clear, I am not donating money to either candidate for US President,” the Tesla boss wrote in an X post. Musk’s declaration comes the day after The New York Times reported that he’d met Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend as the former president seeks to boost his campaign’s financial firepower.
Speculation had been growing about whether Musk—the world’s second-richest man, commanding an estimated $200 million fortune—would offer financial support to Trump. The SpaceX founder, who previously said he voted for Joe Biden in 2020, has recently launched a series of attacks on the Democrat’s administration, going so far as to accuse officials of “treason” over the government’s handling of illegal immigration.
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Musk has also got involved in local politics recently, emailing Tesla employees in Austin, Texas, to hit the polls on Tuesday to unseat its district attorney, José Garza, by voting for someone in the Democratic primary who would “actually prosecute crimes.”
That plea did little to help Garza’s challenger Jeremy Sylestine, however, as the incumbent still won with 67 percent of the vote.
Musk, who predominantly lives in California, did not publicly address the Austin election on Wednesday. He did, however, fire off a string of wonky political posts.
“Politics is tribal, rather than logical,” he wrote in one, agreeing with commenters in the replies who said the U.S. needs to do away with the two-party political system and that Americans follow politics too much like they do sports teams.
He also railed against illegal immigration again, claiming Democrats are soft on the southern border because it’ll eventually lead to a larger voter base—a popular right-wing claim that’s unfounded.
“Incentives drive behavior,” he wrote. “Until the loss of votes from ushering in vast numbers of illegal immigrants exceeds the likely gain of votes over time (as they are gradually legalized), the Democratic Party has a strong incentive to maximize illegal immigration.”
