President Joe Biden’s campaign blasted Elon Musk after reports that Musk donated to a pro-Trump super PAC this week.
Musk donated an undisclosed amount of money to America PAC — a super PAC working to elect Donald Trump in 2024 — Bloomberg first reported on Friday. Sources familiar with the donation told the outlet it contained a “sizable amount” of cash.
Biden’s campaign criticized the donation as “arrogant” and said Trump’s policies would raise taxes for working-class people.
“Arrogant billionaires only out for themselves are not what America wants or what America needs,” James Singer, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, told Bloomberg in a statement. “Elon knows Trump is a sucker who will sell America out, cutting his taxes while raising taxes on the middle class by $2,500.”
Representatives for the Biden campaign did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider on Saturday. Musk did not respond to an email request for comment.
Musk’s political donations have been fairly consistent since the early 2000s, and he has not publicly endorsed a candidate for the 2024 presidential race. In March, the billionaire indicated on X that he had no plans to donate to either candidate.
Still, Musk has increasingly weighed in on hot-button political issues since Donald Trump left the White House in 2020, repeatedly hurling insults and criticism at Joe Biden. In 2022, he called Biden a “damp sock puppet” after he met with executives from Ford and GM about electric vehicle development and excluded Musk’s company, Tesla.
Musk even took to X on Thursday to criticize the President’s press conference, where he mistakenly referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump.”
“This is real!!??” Musk said on X in response to a clip of Biden’s gaffe.
Musk also publicly defended Trump after the former president’s felony conviction for falsifying business records in May. Musk echoed Trump’s narrative that the conviction was an act of political persecution.
“Indeed, great damage was done today to the public’s faith in the American legal system,” Musk wrote in a post on X.
Trump is also reportedly considering Musk for a position as an advisor should he win the presidential election in November. Sources familiar with the discussions told The Wall Street Journal that the two discussed ways to give Musk input on border security and economic policies.
A 2022 analysis by Business Insider found that Musk donated slightly more money to Republicans than Democrats in the prior two decades, giving $574,500 to the GOP and $542,000 to Democrats.
