Republicans Tell Trump That Elon Musk’s Super PAC Is Blowing It

Asawin Suebsaeng, Miles Klee and Andrew Perez
Wed, October 16, 2024

Donald Trump has largely outsourced his 2024 campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation to a Super PAC bankrolled and directed by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man — and one of its most awkward. In recent weeks, several Republican operatives and other figures in the national party have bluntly and directly informed Trump they fear Musk’s organization is falling down on the job of mobilizing voters to cast their ballots for the Republican nominee.

According to two sources familiar with the situation and another person briefed on it, these close Trump allies have told him that they are worried that America PAC, an outside group that Musk created to boost turnout for Trump, is failing in critical battleground states that are likely to be won by razor-thin margins, with only weeks left to go before Election Day. Some partly blame, including when they’ve spoken to Trump, the group’s lead strategists, who are linked to the failed 2024 primary run of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“We were upfront about our concerns,” says a GOP operative close to the former president and 2024 Republican nominee, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations with Trump. Rolling Stone was shown a screenshot of written communications further corroborating that these sentiments were conveyed to Trump himself.

This source adds that they relayed to Trump that they have been in touch “constantly” with conservative activists and other top Republicans based in key swing states, and few of them have had any positive comments lately about the Musk-supported America PAC’s impact in their respective states. Some say they are seeing a relatively small GOTV presence on the ground, despite the Super PAC’s massive spending to boost Trump — $75 million since Joe Biden withdrew from the Democratic ticket in July.

Moreover, the sources say, several members of Trump’s inner circle have grumbled for weeks, including in discussions with Trump, that the Musk operation is being led by senior officials from Ron DeSantis’ embarrassing 2024 effort. In the 2024 GOP primary, the Florida governor and his allies waged a hugely expensive campaign to snatch the nomination from Trump — only to be roundly humiliated by the former president, again and again.

Despite some public displays of unity between Trump and DeSantis — including during the 2024 Republican National Convention, where DeSantis spoke on the arena stage — there remains intense hatred and distrust between the two camps, multiple members and alums of each side say. Many in the upper ranks of Trumpland view Team DeSantis as woefully incompetent and out of touch, and they wonder, as one Trump adviser put it recently to Rolling Stone, “Why in the world would we trust them with anything?”

Some of the private airing of grievances in Trumpworld revolve around the fact that the Super PAC still appears to be building its field operation. Multiple other Republican consultants and mega-donors have pointed out to Rolling Stone in recent days that America PAC still had open postings for canvassers on its website.

“Why isn’t the army already in place?” a high-roller Trump donor asked, rhetorically.

On the Democratic side, which has been tracking the work and progress of the Musk operation, those working to defeat Trump are similarly skeptical. For instance, a 2024 Kamala Harris campaign official tells Rolling Stone the vice president has a larger staff, as well as more than 350 field offices, built up across the swing states, and argues their side has significantly outdone and outpaced the ground-game infrastructure constructed by Team Trump.

America PAC’s spokesperson did not provide comment on this story.

Trump, who has previously publicly feuded with Musk, has recently trashed Musk behind his back as weird, “boring,” and irritating, as Rolling Stone has reported. But he desperately needs the billionaire’s support, now more than ever, given that Harris is massively outraising his 2024 campaign. Trump even campaigned alongside the Tesla CEO earlier this month.

During these conversations with the several anxious allies, the sources say Trump has repeatedly dismissed their warnings about America PAC’s ground game and battleground-state outreach.

“I can tell you from personal interactions with him that Donald Trump loves what Elon and his operation are doing in the battleground states, and nobody trying to convince him otherwise lately has had any effect,” says a Trump political adviser. “As you can see, Trump has been saying at rallies how much he loves Elon and the work he’s putting in … Elon is going all in where it truly matters, especially in Pennsylvania, where his efforts are most visible.”

Moreover, according to multiple sources on or close to the Trump campaign, a number of aides leading Team Trump often view the former president’s allies’ harsh criticisms of the Musk apparatus as a way of trying to turn Trump against his campaign leaders, who largely outsourced the ground game to outside organizations, including the group run by Musk.

And even if Trump did share any of his allies’ concerns, he’s effectively stuck with the Musk show: It is too late for his campaign to aggressively ramp up its own GOTV operation in bitterly contested swing states to make up for any possible Musk-related shortfall.

In the final stretch of a relentlessly close, “trench warfare”-style race between Harris and Trump, Musk has given at least $75 million to America PAC.

This amount comes on top of millions already funneled into the Super PAC by Musk allies in Silicon Valley, including Shaun Maguire, Joe Lonsdale, and Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. But Musk was the group’s only reported donor between July and September.

Musk, who established the Super PAC earlier this year, did not formally endorse Trump until after an attempt on the candidate’s life at a July rally in Pennsylvania. But The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the billionaire’s support of right-wing groups dates back further.

At least $50 million in donations from Musk funded an ad campaign from Citizens for Sanity during the 2022 midterms, including spots that attacked Democrats in battleground states by demonizing immigrants and transgender people. The PAC, incorporated that same year, includes board members from the America First Legal Foundation, founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who is known for pushing far-right anti-immigration policy. According to the Journal, the money was routed through a dark money group led by consultants tied to DeSantis.

Musk also contributed at least $10 million through the conservative group Faithful & Strong Policies to support DeSantis’ failed 2024 presidential bid.

America PAC is led by two veterans of that DeSantis run: Phil Cox, formerly of the Never Back Down Super PAC, and Generra Peck, who served for a short time as DeSantis’ 2024 campaign manager. Peck was reportedly among those who advocated for DeSantis to launch his challenge against Trump in a live-streamed audio event on the Musk-owned platform X (formerly Twitter) that was marred by technical glitches. Cox leads a sprawling consortium of consulting and lobbying firms; Peck is the president of one of the companies.

As with the DeSantis campaign, which ended with the governor failing to win a single state primary, America PAC is heavily focused on canvassing. Never Back Down ran into problems by bringing in paid canvassers; America PAC is similarly paying its canvassers. Such presidential election fieldwork is typically primarily carried out by unpaid volunteers and organized by the actual campaign, not outside groups.

Yet America PAC is now in large part responsible for Trump’s swing-state ground game. The Trump campaign has effectively delegated the bulk of its field operation to the Super PAC, which can accept unlimited donations, thanks in large part to a Federal Election Commission decision this spring that allowed campaigns and outside groups to coordinate their canvassing operations. (The decision was the latest blow to the idea that outside groups are expected to operate independently from candidates.)

Another potential factor in America PAC’s perceived struggles has to do with the Trump campaign’s reliance on a smartphone app called Campaign Sidekick, which is often nonfunctional in rural areas with slower internet where the group is trying to reach low-propensity voters.

Some of the concerns and complaints about the Musk-led operation have already trickled out publicly. GOP operatives and activists in toss-up states are saying they have seen little trace of America PAC’s canvassers at work. The group has switched canvassing vendors twice in the closing months of the campaign and, according to its website, the Super PAC is still looking to hire door-knockers just three weeks before Election Day.

In an interview with the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro last week, Trump was either unwilling or unable to address concerns about his team’s GOTV strategy when Shapiro suggested he’d been hearing lackluster reviews about the Team Trump ground game in tipping-point states.

Beyond any logistical shortcomings, America PAC exhibits Musk’s unmistakable sense of cringe meme humor in its ads. The group has also started featuring screenshots of Musk’s X posts and pictures of Musk in its ads on Facebook. Some of the ads are just plain sloppy: One Facebook ad calling on Pennsylvanians to “STOP THE INVASION” features a photo of refugees who were detained in Greece over a decade ago.

Meanwhile, the Super PAC is apparently devoting considerable resources to collecting 1 million signatures on a purely symbolic petition supporting the First and Second Amendments, paying people $47 for every registered voter they refer who adds their name to the petition. It’s unclear how this would have any discernible effect on voter turnout.

The ex-president could still, of course, win back the White House in November, with or without quality help from Musk. Various high-quality polls — both in internal surveys and public data — show a stubbornly close race between Harris and Trump in the battlegrounds that will decide the election.

Several longtime Trump advisers and confidants tell Rolling Stone they are mildly anxious about Musk trying to take credit for a Trump 2024 victory, if he wins, even though they are confident Musk will not accept the blame if Trump loses.

Apart from America PAC, Musk is certainly doing his part to try to put the twice-impeached former president and convicted felon back in the Oval Office. The billionaire has done what he can to turn X into a right-leaning, MAGA-fied social network, even amplifying misinformation produced by Trumpworld and coordinating with the Trump campaign to temporarily block links to an allegedly hacked, internal opposition research file on his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance.

Musk appeared at a rally with Trump earlier this month in Butler, Pennsylvania, at the site where a gunman’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear in July, and is reportedly spending the final weeks of the campaign in the critical swing state.

Despite this show of enthusiasm, and his hands-on direction of America PAC, Musk’s level of financial commitment to Trump — who has talked about appointing the Tesla CEO to a role in the federal government — has been a matter of ongoing confusion.

Musk denied pledging $45 million a month to help Trump, as was reported in July; around the same time, Trump boasted that Musk was donating that much. Trump additionally claimed to an associate that Musk is pouring $500 million into America PAC.

Now we know that Musk donated $75 million to the pro-Trump Super PAC between July and September — or $25 million per month on average.

 Rolling Stone