Final month, Elon Musk posted on X that President Biden “clearly barely is aware of what’s happening.”
“He’s only a tragic entrance for a far left political machine,” Mr. Musk wrote. It was the twenty ninth time this 12 months that he had posted in regards to the president on X, previously referred to as Twitter, which Mr. Musk purchased in 2022.
Mr. Musk has steadily ramped up his criticism of Mr. Biden because the marketing campaign season heats up earlier than the November presidential election. Mr. Musk has posted about Mr. Biden on X not less than seven occasions a month since January, attacking the president for every part from his age to his insurance policies on immigration and well being. Earlier than that, he posted about Mr. Biden twice in December and by no means in November, based on a New York Instances evaluation. In all, Mr. Musk had posted almost 40 occasions about Mr. Biden this 12 months, in contrast with about 30 occasions for all of final 12 months.
In distinction, Mr. Musk had posted greater than 20 occasions on X this 12 months about former President Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. In these posts, Mr. Musk defended Mr. Trump, arguing that he’s a sufferer of media and prosecutorial bias within the prison circumstances that the previous president faces.
Mr. Musk’s posts about this 12 months’s presidential race stand out as a result of he’s signaling a willingness to tip the political scales because the proprietor of an influential social media platform, one thing that no different chief of a social media agency has executed. And Mr. Musk exerts outsize affect over the political discourse on X, the place he repeatedly posts to his 184 million followers.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder, has shied away from endorsing candidates and infrequently posts political content material on Fb or Instagram. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief, and Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief, have additionally not posted political commentary on their corporations’ social media platforms, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Bhaskar Chakravorti, the dean of world enterprise on the Fletcher Faculty at Tufts College, stated Mr. Musk’s outspokenness on his political opinions may have penalties.
“He has possession and the most important follower base, and he’s a much-larger-than-life character with nearly godlike standing” on one of many largest platforms for political dialogue, Mr. Chakravorti stated. “If he was to actually come out and assist a candidate and put his weight towards it, it may have an effect.”
The White Home, the Biden marketing campaign, Mr. Musk and X didn’t reply to requests for remark.
By bringing an ideological bent to X, Mr. Musk mirrors what media moguls like Rupert Murdoch, whose empire contains Fox Information and The New York Submit, have executed by serving to form their shops’ protection and broader political discourse, stated Sarah Kreps, a professor and director of the Tech Coverage Institute at Cornell College.
Mr. Murdoch “has a specific ideological valence and most of the people know what that’s, and that permeates by way of his totally different media shops,” she stated. “Individuals can choose into these or choose out,” just like X. Some customers — postpone by Mr. Musk’s ideological bent — have migrated to competing social media platforms, she stated.
Nonetheless, Mr. Musk is unlikely to tip November’s vote, social media consultants stated. A lot of his followers already agree along with his political stance, they stated, and the platform has shifted proper since his acquisition.
Mr. Musk has grow to be extra publicly supportive of right-wing candidates and views lately. As just lately as 2022, he described himself as a centrist and a reluctant Democrat. He stated he voted for Mr. Biden hesitantly in 2020. Political giving information present that Mr. Musk has not made nationwide marketing campaign contributions since 2020, when he gave to Republican and Democratic Senate candidates.
However in June 2022, Mr. Musk stated he had voted for a Republican candidate for the primary time in a particular election for Texas’ thirty fourth Congressional District. Within the nationwide midterm elections that November, he urged voters to vote Republican in congressional races since a Democrat was within the White Home.
That evolution continued final Could when Mr. Musk hosted a buggy audio stream on X to announce and endorse Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Musk has not made one other endorsement.
Mr. Musk has additionally repeatedly used X to vocally assist right-wing politicians around the globe, together with Javier Milei, the president of Argentina; Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil; and Narendra Modi of India. He has then tried to make use of that good will to foyer for benefits in these international locations for his different companies, together with SpaceX, a rocket firm, and Tesla, which makes electrical vehicles.
Mr. Musk has courted Mr. Trump, who was booted from X when it was nonetheless referred to as Twitter, after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the Capitol. After shopping for Twitter in 2022, Mr. Musk moved shortly to revive Mr. Trump’s account, though the previous president has posted solely as soon as on the platform since then.
Despite the fact that Mr. Musk has not endorsed Mr. Trump, he has had a number of conversations with the previous president. In March, Mr. Musk and Republican donors met with Mr. Trump in Palm Seaside, Fla., as the previous president sought election donations.
Afterward, Mr. Musk posted on X that he was “not donating cash to both candidate for US President.”
Mr. Musk has been sympathetic to Mr. Trump in his posts. “The extra unfair the assaults on Trump appear to the general public, the upper he’ll rise within the polls,” Mr. Musk wrote final week.
Mr. Musk has lengthy been crucial of Mr. Biden. In 2021, the billionaire slammed Mr. Biden for his choices on electrical automobile promotion and subsidies, most of which favored unionized U.S. auto producers. Tesla, the place Mr. Musk is chief govt, has resisted efforts to unionize its manufacturing.
“My desire for the 2024 presidency is somebody smart and centrist,” Mr. Musk posted in November 2022, weeks after shopping for Twitter — and simply as he introduced Mr. Trump again onto the platform. He added that he had been hopeful in regards to the Biden administration, however was “disillusioned to date.”
In January, Mr. Musk ramped up his critiques of Mr. Biden. He posted seven occasions in regards to the president that month, primarily relating to immigration insurance policies, simply because the Biden administration sued Texas over a legislation that allowed native legislation enforcement to arrest migrants.
“I can’t see myself voting for Biden,” Mr. Musk stated, accusing the president of “facilitating unlawful immigration.”
In February, Mr. Musk stated Mr. Biden supported lax immigration restrictions as a result of they might give him and the Democratic Celebration a bonus within the November election.
“Biden’s technique may be very easy: 1. Get as many illegals within the nation as doable. 2. Legalize them to create a everlasting majority — a one-party state,” Mr. Musk wrote. Because the variety of folks crossing into the USA has reached report ranges, Mr. Biden has known as for a stricter crackdown on immigration and accused Republicans of stymieing his efforts.
Since then, Mr. Musk has escalated his commentary on Mr. Biden, posting 12 occasions in March and complaining the media is a “Biden cheering squad.”
Final month, at a feast in Los Angeles, Mr. Musk together with different billionaires, together with Mr. Murdoch and the enterprise capitalist Peter Thiel, mentioned how you can oppose Mr. Biden’s re-election, based on an individual accustomed to the occasion, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate delicate issues. The dinner was earlier reported by Puck.
Throughout an interview with the previous CNN host Don Lemon in March, Mr. Musk stated that he would proceed voicing his opinion however didn’t need “to place a thumb on the dimensions monetarily that’s important,” and that he would possibly endorse a candidate throughout “the ultimate stretch.”
”I’m leaning away from Biden,” he stated, laughing.
