Elon Musk Promises To Give $1 Million To Someone Everyday Until Election But There’s a Catch
âSo, I have a surprise for you,â Elon Musk said with a grin at an event he hosted in Pennsylvania on Saturday, aimed at getting people in the swing state to vote early and for Donald Trump. âWeâre going to be awarding a million dollars, randomly, to people who have signed the petition everyday from now until the election.â
We refers to America PAC, a political action organization Musk founded and bankrolled to get Trump elected, and the petition in question asks signees to pledge their support to the First and Second Amendments. Those who sign the petition will also reportedly receive $47 for each registered voter they refer who also puts their name down.
Only registered voters of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsinâkey swing statesâcan sign the petition to qualify for Muskâs election-related lottery.
âOne of the challenges weâre having is how do we get people to know about this petition,â Musk continued on Saturday. âThe legacy media won’t report on it; not everyoneâs on X. So, I figure, how do we get people to know about it? This news, I think, is really gonna fly.â
Muskâs remarks were punctuated by a roaring response from the crowd.
The billionaire then handed a giant check with AMERICA PAC and two flags across the top to the dayâs lucky winner: John Dreher. Dreher appeared from the crowd, fist-pumping as he made his way on stage in a Make America Great Again hat.
âBy the way, John had no idea, so um, anyway, youâre welcome,â Musk said before asking if Dreher wanted to say any words.
âThanks, Elon, this is great, Iâm really ecstatic,â he began. âIâve been following you for 10 years, got your biography ten years ago and been watching ever since. Big fan.â
The event in Pennsylvania was Musk’s third in as many days, stumping for Trump and this new petition, while he stoked fears about what would happen if the former president doesnât win in just a couple short weeks. Musk claimedâwithout clear evidenceâthat âif the Kamala machine winsâ there would be widespread censorship, and that it would be âthe last election.â
Some experts have questioned the legality of Muskâs stuntâwith one calling it âvote buying.â
âThough maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal,â Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA, wrote Saturday evening on Election Law Blog.
To date, according to federal disclosure, Musk has given $75 million to America PAC. In total, itâs unclear exactly how much Musk, who Forbes counts as the wealthiest person in the entire world and holds a net worth of $247.4 billion, has shelled out to get the former president back to the White House.
In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk promised to give $45 million a month toward the Trump cause. (He denied this, calling the news ânot true.â) In the past few years, also per reporting from the Journal, âThe Tesla CEO quietly gave tens of millions of dollars to groups with ties to Trump aide Stephen Miller and supporters of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantisâs presidential bid.â These numbers, the investigation found, âmake him one of the biggest donors to conservative causes, which in combination with his large social-media following makes him one of the most influential figures in U.S. politics.â
Musk has a lot vested in the outcome of this election, and how friendly the future heads of government will be toward him. To be exact, an investigation by a team of reporters from the New York Times, published on Sunday, found that last year Muskâs companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts with 17 federal agencies.
In September, Trump said that, if elected, he would establish a government efficiency commission and tap Musk to lead itâa circumstance that, as the Times writes, âwould essentially give the worldâs richest man and a major government contractor the power to regulate the regulators who hold sway over his companies, amounting to a potentially enormous conflict of interest.â
While the pair of billionaires werenât always this close, Musk is all in now. He officially endorsed the former president back in July, after the first failed assassination attempt on Trump.
Earlier this month, Musk joined Trump on the campaign trail for the first time at the former presidentâs rally in Butler, Pennsylvaniaâan event to mark the attempt on his life exactly twelve weeks earlier.
At that eventâwhich featured the SpaceX CEO literally jumping for joy as Trump introduced himâMusk reintroduced himself to the crowd.
âIâm not just MAGA,â he began, adjusting his all-black Make America Great Again hat, âIâm dark MAGA.â
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