Elon Musk funded a super PAC comparing Trump’s position on abortion to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s
Elon Musk was the sole backer of a super PAC formed less than a month before the election that focused on advertising designed to persuade voters Donald Trump ‘s position on abortion resembled that of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
A group called RBG PAC, formed in mid-October, received a single contribution of $20.5 million a week later from an entity called “Elon Musk Revocable Trust,” according to federal campaign finance reports filed this week. Due to the short timeline between the donation and Thursday’s reporting deadline, Musk’s ties to the group — which he did not speak about publicly — were not revealed until the documents became public.
In the final weeks before the November 5 election, the RBG PAC group ran a TV ad noting Trump’s statements that as president he would not sign a national abortion ban, with a narrator saying he “supports reasonable exceptions for rape and incest. and the life of the mother.”
Ginsburg believed that the Constitution protected women’s right to abortion, although she suggested in 2012 that the landmark Roe v. Wade decision “went too much too fast,” affecting the way the abortion rights debate unfolded in subsequent decades might change.
Trump nominated three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe in 2022. This allowed many conservative-led states to ban or restrict access to abortion.
According to a report filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission, the Musk entity has spent almost all of its money on digital ads, mailers and text messages.
That group’s funding represents a small portion of the more than 200 million dollars Musk spent money in the 2024 election cycle, most of it through his super PAC aimed at electing Trump, a signal of the influence wealthy people want to exert in American politics and Trump’s incoming administration.
The richest man in the world, Musk millions poured in an effort to get out of the vote to help the former president return to the White House. He is politically famous for transforming Twitter into X, a platform embraced by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” enthusiasts.
Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, ran ads warning that if people sit out the election, “Kamala and the crazies will win.” A $1 million-a-day election contest That landed the group in court before a judge said it could continue.
Thursday’s filing came as Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy were on Capitol Hill meetings behind closed doors with lawmakers to discuss Trump’s DOGE initiative to dismantle parts of the federal government.
Trump tapped the two business giants to run his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGEa non-governmental task force charged with finding ways to do this firing federal employeescutting programs and eliminating federal regulations – as part of his “Save America” agenda for a second term in the White House.
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Meg Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina, and can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.