- Elon Musk's politics may seem to be all over the place, but he's demonstrated a consistent pattern.
- As far as political donations are concerned, he's been splitting his bets since the early 2000s.
- While he's kept donating to both parties, Musk has also more openly embraced the GOP.
Elon Musk is talking these days like a Republican convert excited to see what the GOP will do to remake America should it regain power in Washington.
But it's actually a political evolution that's been playing out over many years in bits and pieces across podcast appearances, business announcements, festival speeches and, most notably, on his Twitter account.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO's decision to buy Twitter has positioned him on a unique plane in US and global politics, with promises to reform the company as a de facto public square with an emphasis on free speech suitable even for the likes of former President Donald Trump.
While being the world's richest man and a space exploration leader set Musk apart, as far as the money is concerned, his political activity is quite average for a business leader with operations in both solidly red and blue states. Musk's donations going back to 2002 are neatly contained in a single landing page on OpenSecrets, a nonprofit organization that tracks money in politics, and have gone to both sides of the political aisle.
But he's publicly said that he weighs in on politics when it could affect his businesses.
"I get involved in politics as little as possible," he said during a 2015 Vanity Fair event. "There's some amount I have to get involved in, mostly because SpaceX has to battle Boeing and Lockheed for national security and civil space launch contracts. If we don't battle them, then we'll lose."
With all of the influence that a full takeover of Twitter would bring, Musk's political stances carry a different weight than they did earlier in his career as an entrepreneur. Ever since Trump left the White House, the billionaire has increasingly inserted himself into debates over hot button topics and waged a largely one-way feud with President Joe Biden.
On Wednesday alone, Musk said he voted for the first time ever as a Republican, supporting US House candidate Mayra Flores in a special election. Also, in the closest thing Musk has offered to an endorsement for the next White House race, he tweeted how he's leaning toward supporting Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president in 2024.
DeSantis, who has not declared an official run, joked on Wednesday that he welcomes support from "African Americans," referencing Musk being South African.
Here's how Musk got here.
The early years: From apartheid-era South Africa to Tesla takeover
Musk, 50, has said very little publicly about apartheid, the system of racial segregation that became the defining issue of his childhood in the Republic of South Africa.
His father, Errol — who inherited wealth from half of an emerald mine he used to own — was elected to Pretoria City Council in 1972, running under the anti-apartheid Progressive Party. The apartheid system was a major motivation behind the younger Musk's decision to leave South Africa for Canada in 1989, according to Ashlee Vance's 2015 biography of the billionaire.
Growing up in the primarily white suburbs outside of Johannesburg, Musk was also surrounded by censorship and disinformation about the government's treatment of Black people, The New York Times reported in May. His mandatory government service was what first exposed him to the reality of the situation, according to the Times, who spoke with a high school classmate of Musk's about the insulated experience.
"People, at some point, realize that they've been fed a whole lot of crap," Andrew Panzera, who was in Musk's German class, told the Times. "At some point you go, 'Jeepers, we really were indoctrinated to a large extent.'"
Musk's political coming of age during the pre-social media era remains much of a mystery. But then his profile rose with the sale of his company X.com, a competitor to PayPal co-founded by Musk, and his subsequent takeover of Tesla as owner after joining founders Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning with a $6.5 million investment in 2004.
Musk's politics pre-Trump
Musk has long argued for small government and advocated for laissez-faire economic policy, calling the US government the "ultimate corporation" at a CEO summit in December 2020. In terms of donations, he's been in a relative holding pattern from his early years in Silicon Valley up to the present, donating moderate sums of money to politicians from both parties.
He donated $2,000 each to former President George W. Bush and his 2004 Democratic challenger, former Secretary of State John Kerry. Musk also donated to California Democrats up and down the ballot, but still gave the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) $25,000 ahead of the 2006 midterms.
Another example of Musk hedging his donations came in the buildup to the 2008 presidential primaries, where he contributed to both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in their contentious race.
Musk didn't donate to either Clinton or Trump during the 2016 cycle.
The billionaire also started out as a heavy Trump skeptic, saying in October 2015 that it would be "embarrassing" if Trump won the GOP nomination, much less the presidency.
"I don't really have strong feelings except that hopefully Trump doesn't get the nomination of the Republican party, because I think that's, yeah … that wouldn't be good," Musk said at a Vanity Fair event. "I think at most he would get the Republican nomination, but I think that would still be a bit embarrassing."
But more recently, Musk has taken a different approach to the Trump-dominated GOP. His latest donations have all been to Republican candidates and causes, with Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware being the last Democrat to receive any Musk donations back in 2020.
Musk's politics post-2016
Starting in 2017, Musk's donations began to skew much more heavily toward Republicans than Democrats, spending nearly seven times more on GOP campaigns. He also accepted positions on two of Trump's White House councils and tweeted his support of Rex Tillerson's nomination as Secretary of State.
While Musk previously said he supported Hillary Clinton's campaign promises on the environment and climate change, he defended his decision to attend Trump's business council meetings so he could raise the issue along with the January 2017 travel ban affecting Muslim-majority countries. He then stepped down from the councils in June 2017, citing Trump's decision to leave the Paris Climate Accord.
"Climate change is real," Musk tweeted. "Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world."
Musk largely stopped mentioning Trump from that point until much later in his presidency, when the former president attended a SpaceX launch for NASA.
With regard to Musk's ongoing efforts to finalize his purchase of Twitter, the Capitol riot has been a sticking point. Musk has promised to let Trump back on the platform and undo the ban the former president received after the attack.
Musk has also spoken relatively favorably of the Trump administration since he left office, crediting staffers for their unspecified accomplishment of being "effective at getting things done" relative to the Biden White House.
He warned that Democrats would wage a "dirty tricks campaign against me" shortly before Insider published a months-long investigation into a SpaceX flight attendant's allegation that Musk exposed himself to her, engaged in non-consensual touching, and offered to buy her a horse if she gave him an erotic massage.
Musk denied the account and accused Insider of trying to manipulate Tesla's share price so it would be more difficult for him to buy Twitter.
Then came Musk's other declaration on Wednesday, when he tweeted that he voted for a Republican candidate for the first time in a Texas special election. Musk's Texas voter registration does not show party affiliation, but in his tweets about the state of Twitter, he has argued the Democratic Party has drifted further from the center than the GOP.
While Musk has been more bullish in the past few months about support for the GOP and his prediction of a "red wave" in the 2022 midterms — a hardly risky assessment based on historical trends for newly elected presidents and their party in Congress — his history of donations and past comments show that he has tended to position himself wherever he thinks power and influence are heading.
He also hasn't formed a Super PAC or sought to exert influence on the level of mega donors such as the Koch brothers, the Mercer family, Sheldon Adelson, George Soros, and others who are not nearly as wealthy as Musk.
The only difference now is that Musk is financially invested not only in federal contracts, but also the primary home of America's political discourse.