Elon Musk Is The Poster Child For A Corrupt Campaign Finance System

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It took Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, to illustrate to Americans just how dangerous our corrupt campaign finance system is.

This corrupt system allowed Musk to contribute more than $250 million to help elect Donald Trump in 2024, making him Trump’s single biggest financial supporter.

In turn, Musk was richly rewarded by President Trump, who made Musk his governing partner.

In these early weeks of the Trump presidency, Musk has been aggressively implementing his destructive agenda, tearing apart our government, throwing public servants out of their jobs without regard for merit, expertise, or value, and pursuing actions to cripple government agencies that provide essential services for Americans.

There is little to show that government efficiency is Musk’s actual goal, as he claims. Instead, he is creating a constitutional crisis while he attacks our government.

So why was Musk able to contribute more than a quarter of a billion dollars to Super PACs to support Trump’s campaign?

It’s all thanks to two Supreme Court decisions.

Following the Watergate scandals, reforms were enacted in 1974 to shut down the unlimited contributions and secret money that were corrupting federal campaigns. In 1976, the Supreme Court, in its Buckley decision, upheld these reforms.

Then Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission came along.

In 2010, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United set the stage for our current influence-money  political landscape in which Super PACs raise unlimited contributions to spend on federal elections. These unlimited contributions serve as a means for eviscerating the contribution limits enacted in the 1974 reforms.

Then, in 2014, McCutcheon struck down the aggregate limit on the total amount a donor could contribute in a single election to all federal candidates and political committees, including Super PACs.

Of the more than $250 million Musk gave to support Trump’s campaign, about $240 million went to Musk’s own pro-Trump Super PAC.

If not for Citizens United and McCutcheon, Musk would have been prevented from giving almost all of that money.

But, Musk was only the first in line. Super PACs supporting Trump raised nearly $1 billion in unlimited contributions in the 2024 election cycle.

Overall, more than $4.5 billion in unlimited contributions was spent by Super PACs in the 2024 election. Almost all of that would have been prohibited but for those two Supreme Court decisions.

Of the top two dozen donors to Super PACs in the 2024 election, $1.3 billion was given by 18 Republican donors, $200 million was given by six Democratic donors.

Thanks to those Supreme Court decisions, we’ve returned to the pre-Watergate days. Billionaires and multimillionaires, through Super PACs and dark money nonprofits, are now playing a dominant role in federal elections.

This brings us back to Elon Musk, the poster child for the corrupt campaign finance system.

New York Times investigative reporter David Fahrenthold said during the campaign: “It’s hard to overstate how entangled Elon Musk is with the federal government.”

Musk is now, quite simply, a walking conflict of interest:

➡️ Over the past decades, according to published reports, Musk’s companies have received more than $38 billion in federal contracts. NASA alone has invested more than $15 billion into Musk’s SpaceX.

➡️ At least 11 agencies, with more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints, or enforcement actions into Musk’s companies, have been affected by firings and cuts by Musk’s DOGE, The New York Times found. These investigations and actions include violations of federal securities law, safety violations by SpaceX, and hundreds of Tesla complaints.

➡️ The FAA, according to reports, is close to cancelling an existing $2-billion air traffic communications contract awarded to Verizon and giving it to Musk’s Starlink instead.

➡️ While Starlink did not meet reliability standards for a program to bring broadband to underserved areas, reports found that an overhaul by Trump’s Commerce Department could drastically increase the ability for Musk to now benefit from that $42-billion program.

Musk’s actions, unleashed on the government and the people who work for it, have been jaw-dropping for their audacity, chaotic impact, and callousness.

Musk has also shown how deeply broken our campaign finance system is and how it serves to benefit the Super Rich at the expense of ordinary Americans.

It could not be clearer: We must keep fighting for reform of the corrupt campaign finance system and the hold that billionaires and multimillionaires have on our nation. Our democracy depends on it.

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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s and other recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.