WASHINGTON — Elon Musk’s super PAC spent around $200 million to help elect Donald Trump, according to a person familiar with the group’s spending, funding an effort that set a new standard for how billionaires can influence elections.
The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO provided the vast majority of the money to America PAC, which focused on low-propensity and first-time voters, according to the person, who was not authorized to disclose the figure publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
America PAC’s work was aided by a March ruling from the Federal Election Commission that paved the way for super PACs to coordinate their canvassing efforts with campaigns, allowing the Trump campaign to rely on the near-unlimited money of the nation’s most high-profile billionaire to boost turnout in deep-red parts of the country. That allowed the campaign to spend the money they saved on everything from national ad campaigns to targeted outreach toward demographics Democrats once dominated.
The plan worked for both sides. Trump saw key turnout surges in battleground states, and at the end of the campaign the president-elect credited Musk’s role in the race. “We have a new star,” Trump said at his election night party in Florida. “A star is born — Elon!”
“The FEC ruling cleared the way for us to gain more benefit from soft money enterprises that were going out and doing this work anyway,” said James Blair, the Trump campaign’s political director.
Blair worked as the main bridge between the Trump operation and groups like America PAC — a far cry from the early days of super PACs having to decide their strategy without communicating officially with the campaigns they were backing.
“By conserving hard dollars, we were able to go wider and deeper on paid voter contact and advertising programs,” Blair said. That, he added, included broad ad campaigns aimed at a national audience, as well as — critically — more targeted campaigns looking to boost turnout among Black and Latino men, two areas where Trump saw sweeping gains in 2024.
