He’s got enough money to buy the Moon, Mars, and Venus and juggle them. He’s even got enough money to buy Donald Trump the White House, and that’s exactly what he attempted to do today on his social media powerhouse X/Twitter. Musk came up with a semi-legal scam to pay money to people who get registered voters in seven battleground states to sign a petition in support of the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution. Musk’s post on X/Twitter says, “For every person you refer who is a swing state voter, you get $47! Easy money.”
The petition itself, appended to Musk’s post, states “The First and Second Amendments guarantee freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. By signing below, I am pledging my support for the First and Second Amendments. In appreciation of your support, you will receive $47 for each registered voter that [sic] signs this petition.”
Sounds like buying votes to me, right? However, while it is illegal to pay people to register to vote, it is not illegal to refer already registered voters to a website that clearly solicits their vote for Republican candidates.
If all Elon Musk did for the rest of his life is buy enough votes to get Trump elected, it would make him the worst person in the world, to borrow Keith Olbermann’s well-used phrase. But Musk is going further than merely supporting Donald Trump’s third run for the White House. He is actively participating in the spread of dangerous disinformation about the support the Biden administration is supplying to victims of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and elsewhere.
Last Friday, Musk posted on X/Twitter that the Federal Aviation Administration had “shut down” the airspace over states that were hard hit by the hurricane. Musk alleged that “hundreds of pilots of rescue and supply flights had been unable to land in affected areas because their flights had been “blocked” by the FAA and FEMA. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg immediately corrected him, posting that local law enforcement agencies had requested that the FAA and state aviation agencies ensure flight safety by using a “higher level of coordination” between pilots and controllers at airports in the affected areas. After Buttigieg asked Musk to call him if he had any questions, the two spoke on the phone, and Buttigieg explained the heightened security requirements for flights over disaster areas. Musk later posted thanks to Buttigieg on X/Twitter for “simplifying” FAA regulations, which Buttigieg had not told Musk he had done, making it sound like it was Musk who had forced the FAA to change its ways and allow in more aid flights.
Musk also did not change or take down earlier posts he had put up that falsely said that federal agencies and workers had “seized” aid shipments and had wasted the FEMA and Homeland Security budgets “ferrying illegals” into this country.
Here is what Musk has done and will no doubt continue to do as Hurricane Milton, a deadly category five storm, continues to move across the Gulf of Mexico toward the west coast of Florida. Milton is said to have sustained winds of 180 miles an hour, and 15-foot storm surges are expected along the coast with life-threatening flooding and storm damage.
Musk is putting the lives of hurricane victims in North Carolina and Georgia in jeopardy, and if he continues his lies when Milton hits, he will cause the deaths of more people who act on misinformation he allows on his social media platform or posts himself.
Donald Trump invited Musk to his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday, where Musk urged the crowd to “fight,” using the same word that Trump used when he sent his crowd from the Ellipse to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Musk knows, Trump knows, and every Trump supporter who attends a Trump rally knows exactly what the word “fight” means in MAGA-world.
Elon Musk has multiple contracts with the Department of Defense to provide Starlink satellite coverage to hot spots where the U.S. military has outposts around the world. He also has contracts to launch intelligence satellites for the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency. This is the first time in the history of this country that our Defense Department has put so much of its power to defend the United States into the hands of one man. This alone makes Musk a potentially dangerous man, because under a Trump administration, Musk could withdraw from federal defense contracts without risking punishment, so long as Donald Trump controls the Attorney General and the prosecutions he might decide on, or be ordered to undertake.
It's a hard one, isn’t it, trying to decide which of these two unhinged lunatics is more dangerous. If Trump is elected in November, that call will be an easy one. But for the time being, an Elon Musk amped up on Ketamine and leaping around behind Trump on rally stages is right there in the running for most dangerous man in the world, don’t you think?
They're both psychopaths.
A loutish, primitive toddler and an entitled, testosterone-addled adolescent. Easy to see why they get along so well. What could possibly go wrong?