埃隆·马斯克是 2024 年大选的十月惊喜
【中美创新时报2024 年 10 月 30 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）没有一位美国亿万富翁像埃隆·马斯克那样玩弄政治。《华盛顿邮报》记者克尔·谢勒和乔希·道西对此作了下述报道。
他并不是第一个用九位数的钱来播撒虚荣的超级政治行动委员会种子，也不是第一个利用候选人关系来争取政策和政府任命的人。自约瑟夫·普利策和威廉·伦道夫·赫斯特的报纸大战以来，富有的出版商就利用他们的扩音器来倾斜政治天平，就像马斯克在他的社交网络 X 上所做的那样。
但马斯克走得更远。最近几周，他无视司法部的一封警告信，该信警告他可能非法支付报酬以激励选民登记。他曾开玩笑说暗杀民主党候选人副总统卡马拉·哈里斯是徒劳的；分享了大量关于美国选举制度完整性的误导性信息；并向自己的投资者吹嘘他对共和党候选人唐纳德·特朗普的支持具有交易价值，特朗普承诺让马斯克领导一个新的“效率”工作组来改革联邦政府。
“应该有一个自动驾驶汽车的联邦审批程序，”马斯克在 10 月 23 日的特斯拉财报电话会议上表示。“如果有政府效率部，我会尽力帮助实现这一点。”
马斯克没有在幕后操作，而是让自己成为特朗普最后陈述的公开代言人，这是一个人性化的十月惊喜，可以资助他自己的拉票大军，吸引他自己的媒体关注，并在摇摆州宾夕法尼亚州为特朗普举行集会。马斯克的组织美国政治行动委员会 (America PAC) 至少捐赠了 1.185 亿美元，尽管它在法律上保持独立，但它与特朗普的竞选团队密切协调其拉票行动。
“你准备好加入伊隆·马斯克的行列，加入黑暗的 MAGA 了吗？”这是特朗普上周的一封筹款邮件的主题，邮件中将马斯克视为像民主党支持者乔治·克鲁尼或莎拉·杰西卡·帕克一样的名人。只要捐款 47 美元，邮件就会提供抽奖机会，奖品是马斯克签名的黑色 MAGA 帽子，就像马斯克曾经站在特朗普旁边时戴的那顶帽子一样。
“这是一个如此非凡的场景，我们还没有真正吸收它的规模——或者它的独特性，”前联邦选举委员会共和党主席、约翰·麦凯恩总统竞选顾问特雷弗·波特说。“世界上最富有的人正在与特朗普竞选团队一起建立竞选机构，而他之所以成为世界上最富有的人，原因之一是所有政府合同和商业关系都由白宫的人控制。”
美国现代竞选财务制度是在水门事件后，最高法院于 1976 年作出的一项裁决中建立起来的，该制度基于这样一个前提：富人的巨额捐款可能导致腐败或出现腐败的迹象。最高法院于 2010 年重新制定了该制度，结论是“独立支出，包括公司支出，不会导致腐败或出现腐败迹象”。自那时以来，少数富人在政治中的作用急剧扩大，司法和监管部门一再扩大“独立”的含义。
目前，马斯克在法律上仍然“独立”于特朗普的竞选活动，尽管他出现在特朗普的集会上；定期与候选人交谈；资助与特朗普竞选团队共享数据的实地行动；通过直邮、短信和广播为特朗普竞选做广告；已获得未来特朗普政府的顾问职位；并公开宣布他计划利用这一职位来改善自己的商业命运。
从这个意义上讲，马斯克与他的亿万富翁同辈中的许多人并无不同，包括特朗普，他们近年来对政治产生了兴趣。马斯克没有回复寻求采访的电子邮件。美国政治行动委员会的发言人拒绝对本文发表评论。
西北大学政治学家 Daniel Krcmaric 和两位同事在 2023 年进行的一项研究发现，福布斯国际亿万富翁榜上有 11% 的人曾担任或寻求正式的政治职位，包括通过任命。这一比例在专制国家远高于美国，在美国，只有不到 4% 的人寻求直接参与政治，而超级富豪则更喜欢低调。（杰夫·贝佐斯是世界第二大富豪，在联邦政府面前也有大量商业利益，他拥有《华盛顿邮报》。他是《华盛顿邮报》编辑委员会的负责人，最近决定不支持哈里斯。但他并不直接控制制作这个故事的新闻编辑室。）
“不同之处在于马斯克希望每个人都知道这件事，”Krcmaric 说，“而其他人则想保持沉默。”
马斯克在 2016 年公开反对特朗普当选，并在特朗普退出《巴黎气候协定》后于 2017 年辞去政府咨询委员会职务以示抗议。就在两年前，特朗普还把马斯克斥为“吹牛大师”，嘲笑他的“无人驾驶汽车会撞车，火箭飞船会飞向虚无”。特朗普写道，如果没有政府对他的企业的补贴，马斯克将“一文不值”。马斯克宣布特朗普应该“挂起帽子，扬帆出海”。
今年早些时候，马斯克仍对过多参与特朗普的努力持怀疑态度，他告诉其他亿万富翁捐助者，特朗普获胜对他们更有利——但他理解直接向特朗普控制的努力提供大额支票的怀疑态度。“他根本不想成为这件事的公众代言人，”一位在春天与他交谈的人说。“他试图弄清楚如何帮助特朗普而不与此事扯上关系。”
现在，两人互相称赞，特朗普的顾问们也开始将马斯克视为关键盟友。 “埃隆·马斯克是千载难逢的行业领袖，我们支离破碎的联邦官僚机构肯定可以从他的理念和效率中受益，”特朗普竞选团队发言人卡罗琳·莱维特在一份声明中表示。
据特朗普顾问称，两人经常通过电话交谈，马斯克还与特朗普的高层政治团队会面。这些顾问和其他撰稿人一样，要求匿名描述私人谈话。知情人士说，马斯克经常向特朗普提出移民、选举规则和审查制度等问题。
“他们可能每隔一天就会谈论一次，”一位与特朗普关系密切的人士表示，他表示，这位前总统对马斯克的承诺和吸引人群的能力印象深刻。
一位出席者表示，9 月在纽约举行的一次大型捐助者晚宴上，特朗普告诉其他捐助者，他们应该像马斯克一样捐款。据《华盛顿邮报》报道，马斯克出生于南非，在美国非法打工开始了他的职业生涯，他与特朗普因对无证移民和选举舞弊的担忧而结下了深厚的友谊。
马斯克现在是本届选举周期的第四大捐赠者，但考虑到他迟迟不肯捐款，他的排名可能会上升。竞选财务记录显示，马斯克于 7 月初开始向美国政治行动委员会捐款，但他是在前总统在宾夕法尼亚州的一次集会上躲过暗杀后才宣布支持他的。
“他相信，如果特朗普赢得宾夕法尼亚州，他就赢得了选举。他反复告诉我们这一点。他几乎把这当成一桩生意，”特朗普的一位顾问说。“他知道，如果他输掉这场选举，他就完蛋了。监管规定、新民主党政府的态度，以及他们对他为帮助特朗普而花的所有钱的敌意——这对他来说是一笔大买卖。”
题图：埃隆·马斯克周日在纽约麦迪逊广场花园的特朗普集会上向人群发表讲话。Victor J. Blue/Victor J. Blue 为《华盛顿邮报》撰稿
附原英文报道：
Elon Musk is the October surprise of the 2024 election
By Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey The Washington Post,Updated October 29, 2024
Elon Musk addressed the crowd at the Trump rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York.Victor J. Blue/Victor J. Blue For The Washington Post
No American billionaire has played politics like Elon Musk.
He is not the first to seed vanity super PACs with nine-figure sums or work his candidate relationships for policies and government appointments. Since the newspaper wars of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, rich publishers have leveraged their megaphones to tilt the political scales, as Musk does on his social network X.
But Musk goes further. In recent weeks, he has defied a Justice Department letter warning that he may be illegally paying to incentivize voter registration. He has joked about the futility of assassinating Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris; shared a blizzard of misleading information about the integrity of the US voting system; and boasted to his own investors about the transactional value of his support for Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has promised to have Musk lead a new “efficiency” task force to overhaul the federal government.
“There should be a federal approval process for autonomous vehicles,” Musk said on an Oct. 23 Tesla earnings call. “If there’s a Department of Government Efficiency, I’ll try to help make that happen.”
Rather than operate in the backroom, Musk has made himself the public face of Trump’s closing argument, a human October surprise that can finance his own canvassing army, attract his own media attention, and stage rallies for Trump across the swing state of Pennsylvania. Musk’s group, America PAC, to which he has given at least $118.5 million, closely coordinates with Trump’s campaign on its get-out-the-vote operation, even though it remains legally independent.
“Are you ready to join Elon Musk and go Dark MAGA?” read the subject line of a Trump fund-raising email last week, which treated Musk as a celebrity draw like Democratic supporters George Clooney or Sarah Jessica Parker. For a suggested donation of $47, the email offered entry to a raffle for a signed black MAGA cap, like the one Musk once wore standing next to Trump.
“It’s such an extraordinary scene that we haven’t really absorbed the magnitude of it — or the uniqueness of it,” said Trevor Potter, a former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission and counsel to John McCain’s presidential campaigns. “You have the richest man in the world building a campaign apparatus with the Trump campaign at a time when one of the reasons he is the richest man in the world is all of the government contracts and business relationships that are controlled by who is in the White House.”
The nation’s modern campaign finance system, established by a 1976 Supreme Court opinion after the Watergate scandal, is based on the premise that large contributions from wealthy interests can create corruption or the appearance of corruption. The Supreme Court remade that system in 2010, when it concluded that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Since then, the role of the wealthiest few in politics has exploded, aided by the repeated judicial and regulatory expansions of what “independent” means.
As it stands, Musk remains legally “independent” from Trump’s campaign, even though he appears at his rallies; speaks regularly with the candidate; funds a field operation that shares data with Trump’s campaign; advertises through direct mail, text message, and radio to elect Trump; has secured an advisory role in a future Trump administration; and has publicly announced that he plans to use that position to improve his own business fortunes.
In this way, Musk is not unlike many others in his billionaire cohort, including Trump, who have taken an interest in politics in recent years. Musk did not respond to an email seeking an interview. A spokesperson for America PAC declined to comment for this story.
A 2023 study by Northwestern University political scientist Daniel Krcmaric and two colleagues found that 11 percent of those on the international Forbes billionaire list have held or sought a formal political office, including by appointment. The rate was far higher in authoritarian countries than the United States, where less than 4 percent had sought direct political involvement and the very wealthy prefer a lower profile. (Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world who also has substantial business interests before the federal government, owns The Washington Post. He directs the Post’s editorial board and recently decided against running an endorsement of Harris. But he does not exercise direct control over the newsroom that produced this story.)
“The difference is Musk wants everyone to know about it,” Krcmaric said, “whereas others want to keep it quiet.”
Musk publicly opposed Trump’s election in 2016 and resigned in protest from a government advisory council in 2017, after Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords. Just two years ago, Trump dismissed Musk as a “bull—- artist,” mocked his “driverless cars that crash, or rocket ships to nowhere.” Trump wrote that Musk would “be worthless” without government subsidies for his businesses. Musk announced that Trump should “hang up his hat and sail into the sunset.”
Earlier this year, Musk remained skeptical of getting too involved in Trump’s effort, telling other billionaire donors that a Trump win would be better for them — but he understood the skepticism of giving large checks directly to efforts Trump controlled. “He didn’t want to be the public face of this at all,” a person who spoke to him in the spring said. “He was trying to figure out how to help Trump without becoming linked to it.”
Now the two praise each other effusively, and Trump’s advisers have come to see Musk as a key ally. “Elon Musk is a once-in-a-generation industry leader and our broken federal bureaucracy could certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
The two men speak with some regularity by phone, and Musk has met with Trump’s top political team, according to Trump advisers, who like others for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Musk has regularly raised immigration, election rules, and censorship with Trump, the people said.
“They probably talk about every other day,” said a person close to Trump, who described the former president as impressed with Musk’s commitment and his ability to draw a crowd.
At a major donor dinner in New York in September, Trump told the other donors they should be giving money like Musk, a person who attended said. Musk — who was born in South Africa and launched his career in the United States working illegally, according to reporting by The Washington Post — has bonded with Trump over their concern about undocumented immigration and election fraud.
Musk now ranks as the fourth largest donor in this election cycle, though he may move up given his rate of late spending. Campaign finance records show that Musk began making donations to America PAC in early July, but he only announced his endorsement after the former president survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania.
“He believes that if Trump wins Pennsylvania, he wins the election. He’s told us that repeatedly. He’s treating this almost like it’s a business deal,” said one Trump adviser. “He knows if he loses this election, he’s screwed. The regulations, the attitude of a new Democratic administration, the animosity they’ll have for all the money he’s spent to help Trump — it’s a big business bet for him.”
