How Elon Musk Broke with the Democrats to Spend Millions on Donald Trump’s Reelection Campaign

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

The United Auto Workers has filed federal labor charges against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The union accuses the men of illegally attempting to threaten and intimidate workers who go on strike. The UAW’s complaint with the National Labor Relations Board comes in response to these comments made by Trump during a discussion with Musk Monday on the social media platform X, which Musk owns.

DONALD TRUMP: You’re the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in, and you just say, “You want to quit?”

ELON MUSK: Yeah.

DONALD TRUMP: They go on strike. I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike. And you say, “That’s OK. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. So, every one of you is gone.” And you are the greatest. You would be very good. Oh, you would love it.

AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, UAW President Shawn Fain spoke to CBS about why the union filed federal labor charges against Trump and Musk.

SHAWN FAIN: This is the problem in America right now. The rich keep getting richer at the expense of the working class. And people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, they sneer at labor law, but they don’t care about labor law, because they don’t care about working-class people. You know, they believe in buying off the system and buying off politicians and being able to have their way with people.

And, you know, look, employers need to be held accountable in this country when they break the law. It is a federal right of workers to go on strike, and they cannot be fired for that. But, you know, people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, they laugh about firing people, because they can care less about people and about their jobs and what they do to their careers. All they care about is their billionaire buddies and taking more wealth.

And so, this is a which-side-are-you-on election, and that’s why working-class people will vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, because they’re one of us, and Donald Trump and Elon Musk represent everything that this nation stands against.

AMY GOODMAN: While the UAW has endorsed Kamala Harris, Elon Musk is funding a new political action committee to help elect Donald Trump. There have been reports Musk was planning to spend $45 million a month to help elect Trump, but Musk has disputed that figure.

We’re joined now in Boston by Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli. She recently co-wrote an article headlined “Inside Elon Musk’s Hands-On Push to Win 800,000 Voters for Trump.” She’s the author of the new book The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power.

We’re going to talk about that in a minute, but let’s start with Elon Musk and your latest reporting, Dana. Before we talk about the UAW filing a complaint with the NLRB, let’s talk about what Elon Musk’s role is in Donald Trump’s campaign for president.

DANA MATTIOLI: It’s really fascinating. As early as a few months ago, Elon Musk said he would not be contributing any money to either presidential candidate. And what we’ve seen is a complete 180. Not only did he start this super PAC with lots of money to help Donald Trump win, he is really taking on the get-out-the-vote aspect of the Trump campaign. He also had a big endorsement for Donald Trump after the assassination attempt. So he’s become like a very big political player this presidential cycle, in addition to running six companies that he’s involved in. This is a person with a very big microphone.

The super PAC is looking to get 800,000 low-propensity voters in swing states to the polls for Donald Trump. Elon also wants his workers in those states to register new voters to get them for the polls. But it’s had a bit of disruption in the last few weeks because he signed off on firing a lot of their vendors.

AMY GOODMAN: Firing the vendors, which, of course, firing was what Donald Trump was praising his ability to do in that conversation he had with Elon Musk on X. But talk more about why he broke with the Democrats and joined Donald Trump in his effort to become president.

DANA MATTIOLI: Yeah, it’s sort of this remarkable political transformation. You know, as of a few years ago, Musk has said that he exclusively voted for Democrats. He voted for Obama. He was pretty close to President Obama. And he voted for Democrats up and down the ticket.

What has happened is, during the Biden administration, there was a break between Elon and the Democrats. He felt like he was almost pushed out of his party. It related to Tesla primarily. You know, the Biden administration, because he has said he wants to be the most pro-union president in history, Biden is very reliant on the United Auto Workers union. And the United Auto Workers union does not love Tesla, because Tesla’s factories are not unionized. So, whenever Biden held electric vehicle summits or would praise other companies for moving to the transition away from fossil fuels, Elon Musk and Tesla were not invited or name-checked. And this really grated on the billionaire, because, you know, his company has primarily the biggest market share in the EV space. It felt like these personal slights.

In addition to that, as Elon Musk’s wealth grew — you know, he’s the richest man in the world — the progressive wing of the party started villainizing him for wealth, for taxes, for income disparity in the country. And, you know, he started to move more to the right the last few years, culminating in this historic PAC that he helped form.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk about what Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his staff, when he was running for president, has to do with the new super PAC that Elon Musk is behind but doesn’t want to be seen as behind?

DANA MATTIOLI: Yeah. So, when Elon started this super PAC in April, he started meeting with vendors in Austin, Texas, and he told them that he wanted to create this red wave of voters. And he started relying on these Texas-based advisers for this. More recently, just a few weeks ago, he brought in some of the team from Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential bid. These are people from the campaign but also run DeSantis’s super PAC. He brought them in, and then, right after he brought them in, we saw the vendors change at Elon’s super PAC, called the America PAC.

And that’s caused really big disruptions, because the people that were hired to knock on doors in all these swing states were fired. The people that were hired to maintain the super PAC’s website, to get forms out to prospective voters who wanted to register to vote, were fired, so those forms never went out. And there were other disruptions along the way, 90 days before the election starts. And some of the political operatives we’ve spoken to on the Republican side have worried that because this is such a big part of the GOP’s efforts on get out the vote, where, you know, they think that the Democrats have historically been stronger, that this could cause some speed bumps along the way very close to the election.

AMY GOODMAN: So, people who thought they were signing up to get ballots, they haven’t gotten them?

DANA MATTIOLI: Yeah, that’s right. People from swing states that put all of their information into the America PAC’s website were supposed to be mailed documents that they could then sign and send to their elected officials to register. What happened is, the America PAC fired the vendor that was mailing out those forms a few days before they were about to send them, so those have not been mailed out yet. There’s 8,500 of them.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the two investigations into America PAC, Dana?

DANA MATTIOLI: Yeah. So, that very issue has raised some alarm bells at some of the swing states. And they were worried that the America PAC was just collecting voter information under the guise of registering them to vote. But the full picture is a little bit more complicated. Had the vendors been able to stay on, you know, the 8,500 people who put in their personal information would have received those forms. But it was really because the new people, leadership of the PAC came in, and there was this disruption, that that last part of the cycle was not completed. Interestingly enough, the super PAC has had to rehire the vendor that it fired to complete that task.

AMY GOODMAN: How is Elon Musk hiding his name in the various PACs that he’s supporting?

DANA MATTIOLI: Yeah, what we’ve learned is really interesting. While Musk formed this PAC with a lot of his friends and cohort, he did not want to be the face of it, and he took pains to hide his involvement. You know, he has been on weekly one-hour phone calls with the vendors to get progress reports from them. He’s very hands-on. He has asked them to show him the training materials for the door knockers. He has asked them to videotape what they say at the doors when they’re knocking, right? So he’s really keeping a very close look at how the progress of the PAC is. But he didn’t want to be the face.

So, what he did was he assembled the PAC, and he assembled other donors to give checks of $500,000 or a million dollars for the first quarter of expenses that appeared in July 15th federal campaign filings, with the intent of not donating himself the majority of the money for the PAC until July 1st or after, so that it wouldn’t show up until the October 15th filings. What happened was, we were able to get to the bottom of his involvement, and we reported these big stories about his involvement. And then there was a witch hunt within the PAC to see where the leaks came from. He was not very happy about that.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can address, Dana Mattioli, what Elon Musk said about, well, you, The Wall Street Journal, denying that he’s putting in $45 million a month? I think at the time it was four months; it would be about $200 million into electing Donald Trump. He directly named The Wall Street Journal in saying it wasn’t true.

DANA MATTIOLI: He did. What we understand is he was really upset about the report coming out. Interestingly enough, before he denied it, he responded to someone on Twitter who said — who made the point that Elon went from voting for Obama to giving $180 million to Donald Trump and that the Democrats must have screwed up pretty badly. And Elon confirmed that and said, “Yeah.” And then, after, he started to deny the reports and walk back how much money he’s giving.

We have, you know, really stood by our reporting. He has told people around him that he would give around $45 million a month. You know, he obviously has the option to change his mind. Nothing is said and done until he writes those checks. But our understanding is, at the outset of this, he told them that he would fund the majority of the costs that were associated with the PAC, and that he has said that he would give $45 million a month.

AMY GOODMAN: And how is this all legal?

DANA MATTIOLI: You know, this is the world of super political action committees. You know, this happens on both sides, I should say. There are super PACs on the Democratic side, as well. And it’s a way for billionaires to really pool their resources in major ways that are not allowed if you’re just giving individual contributions to campaigns. And this is how a lot of the big money is funded when it gets to presidential elections.

AMY GOODMAN: And Trump, who has been attacking EVs, electric cars, for quite some time now, has flipped, hasn’t he?

DANA MATTIOLI: Yeah, he’s definitely softened his stance since Elon has come out in full support of him. You know, Trump had been pretty critical of the EV sector. He’s been known to be very close to Big Fossil Fuel and the oil companies. And he’s even come out and said that he has to be more supportive of electric vehicles because Elon has come out with such support of him. So, that’s like a really fascinating thing here, as well. And they even spoke about it during the live stream, their differing opinions on fossil fuels, global warming, EVs. And, you know, there’s definitely differing opinions there. But fascinating enough, even if you think about that, you know, Tesla, SpaceX, which Elon also owns and runs, these are both mission-based companies that would historically align more with Democratic causes.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, when Donald Trump called for UAW President Shawn Fain to be fired.

DONALD TRUMP: The United Auto Workers ought to be ashamed for allowing this to happen, and the leader of the United Auto Workers should be fired immediately. And every single autoworker, union and nonunion, should be voting for Donald Trump, because we’re going to bring back car manufacturing, and we’re going to bring it back fast.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Dana Mattioli, that was Donald Trump in his acceptance speech in Milwaukee talking about Shawn Fain, repeatedly saying his name, saying he should be fired. Now you have UAW President Shawn Fain filing a labor relations complaint against Musk and Trump for saying that they were firing striking workers or celebrating firing striking workers, which is illegal. Talk about Elon Musk and his relationship with UAW, and Donald Trump and his relationship with UAW and Shawn Fain.

DANA MATTIOLI: Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk has had a very, very contentious relationship with the United Auto Workers union. Elon has been famously anti-union for Tesla. His Fremont factory, where these cars are assembled, is not unionized. And Elon has got into some hot water over the years about his comments about union activity at Tesla. And it’s also the reason that he was on the outs or is on the outs with the Biden administration. You know, he’s one of the only U.S. automakers that isn’t a unionized shop, and he was ostracized because of that decision. So, this is, you know, par for the course with friction between the union and Elon.

What’s interesting is, the Republican Party has been trying to court union workers and is trying to make themselves look more pro-union. So we’re seeing this confluence happening with what each party stands for and, like, some blurred lines there, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s stay at the Republican convention, where we were broadcasting from in Milwaukee. Next week, of course, we’re headed to the Democratic convention, and we’ll be broadcasting from Chicago.