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Last month, Elon Musk posted on X that President Biden “clearly barely is aware of what’s happening.”
“He is only a tragic entrance for a far left political machine,” Mr. Musk wrote. It was the twenty ninth time this yr that he had posted in regards to the president on X, previously often known as Twitter, which Mr. Musk purchased in 2022.
Mr. Musk has steadily ramped up his criticism of Mr. Biden because the marketing campaign season heats up earlier than the November presidential election. Mr. Musk has posted about Mr. Biden on X a minimum of seven occasions a month since January, attacking the president for all the pieces from his age to his insurance policies on immigration and well being. Before that, he posted about Mr. Biden twice in December and in no way in November, in response to a New York Times evaluation. In all, Mr. Musk had posted almost 40 occasions about Mr. Biden this yr, in contrast with about 30 occasions for all of final yr.
In distinction, Mr. Musk had posted greater than 20 occasions on X this yr about former President Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. In these posts, Mr. Musk defended Mr. Trump, arguing that he’s a sufferer of media and prosecutorial bias within the legal instances that the previous president faces.
Mr. Musk’s posts about this yr’s presidential race stand out as a result of he’s signaling a willingness to tip the political scales because the proprietor of an influential social media platform, one thing that no different chief of a social media agency has carried out. And Mr. Musk exerts outsize affect over the political discourse on X, the place he recurrently posts to his 184 million followers.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder, has shied away from endorsing candidates and infrequently posts political content material on Facebook or Instagram. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief, and Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief, have additionally not posted political commentary on their firms’ social media platforms, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Bhaskar Chakravorti, the dean of worldwide enterprise on the Fletcher School at Tufts University, mentioned Mr. Musk’s outspokenness on his political opinions might have penalties.
“He has possession and the biggest follower base, and he’s a much-larger-than-life character with nearly godlike standing” on one of many largest platforms for political dialogue, Mr. Chakravorti mentioned. “If he was to essentially come out and assist a candidate and put his weight in opposition to it, it might have an effect.”
The White House, the Biden marketing campaign, Mr. Musk and X didn’t reply to requests for remark.
By bringing an ideological bent to X, Mr. Musk mirrors what media moguls like Rupert Murdoch, whose empire contains Fox News and The New York Post, have carried out by serving to form their shops’ protection and broader political discourse, mentioned Sarah Kreps, a professor and director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University.
Mr. Murdoch “has a selected ideological valence and most of the people know what that’s, and that permeates by his totally different media shops,” she mentioned. “People can decide into these or decide out,” much like X. Some customers — postpone by Mr. Musk’s ideological bent — have migrated to competing social media platforms, she mentioned.
Still, Mr. Musk is unlikely to tip November’s vote, social media specialists mentioned. Many of his followers already agree along with his political stance, they mentioned, and the platform has shifted proper since his acquisition.
Mr. Musk has develop into extra publicly supportive of right-wing candidates and views lately. As just lately as 2022, he described himself as a centrist and a reluctant Democrat. He mentioned he voted for Mr. Biden hesitantly in 2020. Political giving data present that Mr. Musk has not made nationwide marketing campaign contributions since 2020, when he gave to Republican and Democratic Senate candidates.
But in June 2022, Mr. Musk mentioned he had voted for a Republican candidate for the primary time in a particular election for Texas’ thirty fourth Congressional District. In the nationwide midterm elections that November, he urged voters to vote Republican in congressional races since a Democrat was within the White House.
That evolution continued final May when Mr. Musk hosted a buggy audio stream on X to announce and endorse Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Musk has not made one other endorsement.
Mr. Musk has additionally repeatedly used X to vocally assist right-wing politicians all over the world, together with Javier Milei, the president of Argentina; Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil; and Narendra Modi of India. He has then tried to make use of that good will to foyer for benefits in these nations for his different companies, together with SpaceX, a rocket firm, and Tesla, which makes electrical vehicles.
Mr. Musk has courted Mr. Trump, who was booted from X when it was nonetheless often known as Twitter, after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the Capitol. After shopping for Twitter in 2022, Mr. Musk moved rapidly to revive Mr. Trump’s account, though the previous president has posted solely as soon as on the platform since then.
Even although Mr. Musk has not endorsed Mr. Trump, he has had a number of conversations with the previous president. In March, Mr. Musk and Republican donors met with Mr. Trump in Palm Beach, Fla., as the previous president sought election donations.
Afterward, Mr. Musk posted on X that he was “not donating cash to both candidate for US President.”
Mr. Musk has been sympathetic to Mr. Trump in his posts. “The extra unfair the assaults on Trump appear to the general public, the upper he’ll rise within the polls,” Mr. Musk wrote final week.
Mr. Musk has lengthy been essential of Mr. Biden. In 2021, the billionaire slammed Mr. Biden for his choices on electrical automobile promotion and subsidies, most of which favored unionized U.S. auto producers. Tesla, the place Mr. Musk is chief government, has resisted efforts to unionize its manufacturing.
“My choice for the 2024 presidency is somebody wise and centrist,” Mr. Musk posted in November 2022, weeks after shopping for Twitter — and simply as he introduced Mr. Trump again onto the platform. He added that he had been hopeful in regards to the Biden administration, however was “upset up to now.”
In January, Mr. Musk ramped up his critiques of Mr. Biden. He posted seven occasions in regards to the president that month, primarily relating to immigration insurance policies, simply because the Biden administration sued Texas over a legislation that allowed native legislation enforcement to arrest migrants.
“I can not see myself voting for Biden,” Mr. Musk mentioned, accusing the president of “facilitating unlawful immigration.”
In February, Mr. Musk mentioned Mr. Biden supported lax immigration restrictions as a result of they might give him and the Democratic Party a bonus within the November election.
“Biden’s technique may be very easy: 1. Get as many illegals within the nation as potential. 2. Legalize them to create a everlasting majority — a one-party state,” Mr. Musk wrote. As the variety of individuals crossing into the United States has reached report ranges, Mr. Biden has referred to as for a stricter crackdown on immigration and accused Republicans of stymieing his efforts.
Since then, Mr. Musk has escalated his commentary on Mr. Biden, posting 12 occasions in March and complaining the media is a “Biden cheering squad.”
Last month, at a dinner party in Los Angeles, Mr. Musk together with different billionaires, together with Mr. Murdoch and the enterprise capitalist Peter Thiel, mentioned find out how to oppose Mr. Biden’s re-election, in response to an individual conversant in the occasion, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate delicate issues. The dinner was earlier reported by Puck.
During an interview with the previous CNN host Don Lemon in March, Mr. Musk mentioned that he would proceed voicing his opinion however didn’t need “to place a thumb on the dimensions monetarily that’s important,” and that he would possibly endorse a candidate throughout “the ultimate stretch.”
”I’m leaning away from Biden,” he mentioned, laughing.
