When Donald Trump declared his “spectacular victory” as the results of the United States presidential election began to come in, he paid special praise to a man who helped return him to the nation’s most important job.

“A star is born, Elon,” he said in a speech in West Palm Beach, Florida, referring to his biggest ally in the presidential race: Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter).

Musk indeed played a huge role in Trump’s comeback; Not only has he pumped millions of dollars into Trump’s campaign, but he has also served as a policy advisor and supporter, effectively turning social media platform X into a Make America Great Again (MAGA) spokesperson.

Musk shared a post on X saying “The future will be amazing” after it became clear that Trump would return to the White House.

The future will be amazing pic.twitter.com/I46tFsHxs3

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 6 November 2024

The billionaire’s star may indeed rise under Trump, who has previously suggested his ally could become a “cost-cutting secretary” in the cabinet. Experts have warned that Musk, whose Space

As the dust settles, here’s everything you need to know about how the world’s richest man helped one of the wildest political comebacks in history. How did Musk use his money and influence to put Trump back on top and why?

How much did Musk donate to Trump’s campaign?

To put it bluntly, billionaires have played a larger role than ever in the presidential campaigns of both Democrats and Republicans. Microsoft’s Bill Gates and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg have endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. But what really made the difference was Musk’s all-round support for Trump.

Musk donated an estimated $132 million to Trump and other Republicans ahead of the 2024 elections, according to the Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) final statement before Election Day last month.

Two of the largest donations ($43.6 million and $75 million) went directly to the Trump campaign machine, specifically the America PAC (political action committee) founded by Musk himself.

Controversially, Musk launched a cash donation in key swing states to registered voters who agreed to sign a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect free speech and the right to keep and bear arms, respectively. Earn $1 million a day.

“Every day from now until the election, we will randomly award $1 million to people who sign the petition,” Musk said at a campaign event on October 19.

The move was challenged in a Pennsylvania court after the U.S. Department of Justice warned that the group may be violating election laws that prohibit paying to register to vote. But on Monday, judges ruled that the operation could continue after Musk’s lawyers argued that the winners were vetted spokespeople and not chosen at random.

Musk is now being sued by a class-action lawsuit from voters who claim he convinced them to sign the petition under false pretenses that they had a chance at winning $1 million. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by Arizona resident Jacqueline McAferty, who accused Musk of using the gift to collect valuable personal data and drive traffic to X.

FEC records also showed that Musk gave $10 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a PAC with a mandate to “preserve and expand the Republican Senate Majority,” potentially helping Republicans successfully take back control of the Senate in this election.

Musk also allegedly made other unreported donations to Republicans.

How was X used as a spokesperson for MAGA?

Although it may seem odd now, Elon Musk was once perceived as a liberal and renewable energy advocate, claiming to have voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. This image has changed since 2022 following its takeover of social media platform Twitter. now rebranded as X.

After promising to turn Twitter into a “politically neutral” forum, Musk fired employees responsible for monitoring disinformation. It also restored more than 62,000 suspended accounts, including white nationalist and neo-Nazi accounts accused of spreading hate speech and conspiracy theories.

Most importantly, it also reversed a ban on Trump’s account, which the platform shut down following the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021, which many claimed Trump had encouraged.

As the election approached, critics said X had become an unofficial home platform for the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. The owner himself was accused of “admiring” Trump and spreading misinformation among his 200 million followers; The effect is amplified by X’s algorithm.

One example of this was the introduction of a doctored video of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris; In this video, a fake voice-over said: “I was chosen because I am the best diversity hire.” Musk reposted the video in July with the words “this is amazing” and a laughing emoji, and an item not flagged as a parody garnered 136 million more views.

Misinformation about “illegal aliens” voting in the elections was also circulating in X. This is despite studies from both conservative and left-leaning organizations showing that cases of crimes that attract up to a year in prison, fines and potential deportation are negligible.

A conspiracy theory that Democrats were importing illegal immigrants and giving them amnesty to expand their voter base in future elections was also allowed to circulate in X and was amplified by Musk himself. “Dem. America will then become a one-party, deep blue socialist state,” he said in an October post.

Democrats imported large numbers of illegal immigrants into swing states. 3-digit increase in the last 4 years!

Their STATED plan is to give them citizenship as soon as possible and convert all swing states to Dem.

America would then become a one-party, deep blue socialist state.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 25, 2024

Following Trump’s televised debate against Harris in September, in which he repeated the false claim that Haitian immigrants in an Ohio town were eating cats and dogs, Musk reposted a photo of a cat holding a sign that read “Kamala hates me” with a laughing emoji.

Despite his clear commitment to free speech, Musk has suppressed some news, such as journalist Ken Klippenstein’s article detailing the vulnerabilities of Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, reportedly derived from leaked documents. While the journalist’s account was later reactivated, links to the article were blocked.

A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in March this year confirmed the platform’s growing popularity among Republican supporters, showing that 53 percent thought it was “good for democracy”; That’s roughly three times the 17 percent who responded the same way in 2021.

Why did Musk form an alliance with Trump?

The powerful unification of their fan bases has strengthened the alliance between Trump and Musk.

It wasn’t too long ago that there was no love lost between the two. In 2022, Trump called Musk a “bullfighting artist” for allegedly lying about his support in the 2016 election. Musk responded on his Twitter account at the time, saying it was “time for Trump to take off his hat and sail off into the sunset.”

Fast forward two years, and the tech mogul was alongside Trump in a black MAGA hat at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Musk’s shift to the right is sometimes attributed to the government shutting down Tesla factories during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, he reopened a factory in Fremont, California, and took a stand against the “bureaucratic drip,” declaring he was ready to be arrested.

His shift to the right has since become evident in his dealings with anti-regulation leaders such as Argentine President Javier Milei. Musk has also become close to international right-wing leaders such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, India’s Narendra Modi and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

But various American media outlets, such as Vanity Fair and the Washington Post, have pointed to a deeper motivation triggered by one of her children’s decision to come out as transgender in 2022, cut ties with Musk, and change her last name to Wilson. . Claiming that he was “tricked” into signing medical treatment in an interview with Jordan Peterson, Musk announced his fight against the “awakened mind virus.”

In 2021, Musk shifted Tesla’s headquarters from Palo Alto, California, in Silicon Valley, to Austin, Texas, and similarly changed his residence from California to Texas. In July of this year, Musk said he would move SpaceX and X from California to Texas because of a law that prohibits schools from forcing teachers to notify parents when their children change their gender identity.

How Musk helped Trump reach young men

Observers say Musk and Trump, who present themselves as rule-breaking, non-mainstream “alpha males,” appear to have tapped into a widespread sense of male disillusionment in America, stemming in part from the #MeToo movement and the feminist backlash against “toxic masculinity.” led some men to say they felt stigmatized and marginalized.

Writing in the New York Times last month, John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, called Trump’s play on the young male vote a “master class in sibling whispering.” A recent Harvard Youth Poll found that 35 percent of men between the ages of 18 and 24 questioned supported Trump; That push for the “bro vote” paid off, with a five percentage point increase from the 2020 poll.

This is a sensibility that finds expression in so-called “sister” podcasts like the Joe Rogan Experience. Rogan endorsed Trump after interviewing Musk on Monday. “The great and powerful @elonmusk. If it weren’t for him, we’d be doomed. He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll ever hear, and I agree with him every step of the way,” Rogan told X.

The message clearly resonated.

Two days later, Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States.