Tesla's billionaire CEO Elon Musk donated $75 million to the America PAC, a political action committee that supports former President Donald Trump, stimulating the MAGA political meme coin to surge in the Asian market on Wednesday (October 16), reversing the previous short-term trend.
The Hill reported that according to the latest campaign finance records filed on Tuesday, Musk has personally donated at least $75 million to pro-Trump political action committees since July to push the former president back to the White House. Musk has publicly supported former President Trump for months, and at a recent rally in Pennsylvania, he jumped on the stage and sparked countless netizens' discussions, reflecting his enthusiasm.
Since Musk founded the US PAC earlier this year, it has launched boundary-pushing voter outreach initiatives in battleground states and has reportedly hired hundreds of employees.
Since June, the super PAC has poured more than $102.2 million into the 2024 presidential election, with tens of millions of dollars going to support Trump and attack Vice President Kamala Harris. The PAC also spent nearly $8.9 million opposing President Biden until Biden dropped out of the race in mid-July, according to OpenSecrets’ political money tracking data.
Previous records show that the U.S. political action committee has raised millions of dollars from close allies of Musk, including Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Sequoia Capital partners Doug Leone and Shaun Maguire, and cryptocurrency investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
Musk had reportedly pledged to donate $45 million a month to support Trump, but he later said his donations would be "much less." But exactly how much Musk has committed to the super PAC has remained a mystery — until now.
Musk donated three times in July to U.S. political action committees totaling $75 million, according to a third-quarter report filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission. No other contributors were disclosed during that period.
This is the first report the super PAC has had to file since mid-July; another report will be released on October 24, covering the period from October 1 to October 16.
In recent weeks, the U.S. Political Action Committee has offered each swing state voter $47 to sign a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments, an apparent effort to find potential Trump voters in key battleground states.
The super PAC's early efforts to register voters in swing states sparked investigations by the North Carolina Election Commission and the Michigan Secretary of State's office. Those investigations stemmed from a CNBC report that individuals in certain states visited the Super PAC's "Register to Vote" page and were asked to submit personal information but were not ultimately directed to a website where they could register to vote in their state.
As Trump has turned to support Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, news of Musk's $75 million donation boosted the crypto market, with the MAGA meme coin soaring to $4.66 before falling back to $4.51.
It is worth noting that Musk's Tesla took a rare action on Wednesday to transfer all of its $770 million Bitcoin reserves to a new address, triggering a panic of dumping.
