Elon Musk, the great disruptor of our time, the enigmatic, egomaniacal ultra-billionaire whose bold claims and brash decisions have come to define a modern era, is boringly predictable. For close to a decade, when push comes to shove, he’s just another Republican.
Axios has reported that despite a widely publicized spat with Donald Trump last year, Musk is reviving his America PAC and pledging to throw millions of dollars at Republican candidates during the 2026 midterms.
In the 2024 election cycle, Musk’s America PAC spent more than $260 million across the presidential and other down-ballot elections. It’s unclear how much Musk is prepared to spend this election cycle, especially as shares in his recently public SpaceX company have been slipping amid an overall economic downturn. Still, “slipping” for Musk means losing $20 billion from his net worth… of almost $700 billion. The super PAC money is pennies for the world’s richest man, who has once again indicated that he’s willing to put his thumb on the scale for conservative candidates.
For anyone who’s been paying close attention to Musk for years, this should come as no surprise. Musk’s allegiance to the MAGA movement has always rested on two pillars: his direct financial benefit and his own brand of convoluted, reactionary social politics.
The discrepancy here is Musk and Trump’s various feuds and estrangements, the most recent of which came in the middle of 2025, when Musk’s chaotic stint running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency came to an end and Trump transitioned to pushing forward a massive spending bill that undermined the job he’d presumably hired Musk to do. That was an ego blow for Musk, who blustered furiously about starting a new political party to compete with the GOP and torched Trump over his connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
That feud briefly divided the MAGA base of influencers, some of which never fully returned to the fold. But Musk himself is a perfect example of a universal truth across the right-wing ecosystem: when ballots come around, there’s only one party that offers the far-right fever swamp the blend of unrestrained capitalism (masquerading as “fiscal conservatism”) and xenophobia that it so craves.
In recent months, Musk, who grew up in apartheid South Africa, has been on a tear whipping up sentiment in the right-wing culture wars, retweeting diatribes by everyone from British anti-immigration nationalist Tommy Robinson to former Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe. But you only have to scroll a few posts down on his page to get a hint of what might be the real reason behind his renewal of fealty to the MAGA throne: a retweet of the news that Trump’s Department of Transportation had recently slashed an enormous amount of red tape that slowed down the development of autonomous vehicles, an industry Musk’s Tesla car company is heavily involved in. Scroll down a little further, and you’ll see NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, who just visited the White House, singing Musk’s praises. The favors are coming in, and the money is going out.
But despite the hypocritical and cynical reasoning behind it, money is power in America, and the overall financial scoreboard looks rough for the Democrats. Per Axios, conservative super PACs and other funds have a $300 million advantage over their liberal counterparts, and Trump himself has another $400 million in his MAGA Inc. super PAC. All that money will have to overcome a steep polling deficit, however: recent polls on Trump’s approval rating are dismal for the GOP, which will surely be trying to find out how to thread the needle between whipping up the pro-Trump base without alienating the wide majority of Americans who, broadly, think the president sucks at his job.
But as Trump has proven time and time again in his career, you don’t need competency when you’ve got cash on your side. It’s a philosophy Elon Musk lives by as well — and it’s made both men very, very rich.
