The Dangerous Anti-Democracy Coalition
Elon Musk and entrepreneur and investor David Sacks reportedly held a secret billionaire dinner party in Hollywood last month. Its purpose: to defeat Joe Biden and reinstall Donald Trump in the White House. The guest list included Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken, Travis Kalanick, and Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury secretary.
Meanwhile, Musk is turning up the volume and frequency of his anti-Biden harangues on his X platform.
Since January, Musk has posted about Biden at least seven times a month, attacking the president for everything from his age to his policies on immigration and health. Last month, Musk posted on X that Biden “obviously barely knows what’s going on” and that “He is just a tragic front for a far left political machine.”
So far this year, Musk has posted more than 20 times in favor of Trump, arguing that he’s a victim of media and prosecutorial bias in the criminal cases that Trump faces.
This is no small matter. Musk has 185 million followers on X. And because he owns the platform, he’s able to manipulate the algorithm to maximize the number of people who see his posts.
No other leader of a social media firm has been as willing to tip the political scales toward authoritarian leaders around the world — not just toward Trump but also toward Javier Milei, the president of Argentina; Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil; and Narendra Modi of India.
Some of this helps Musk’s business interests. In India, he has secured lower import tariffs for Tesla vehicles. In Brazil, he has opened a major new market for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service. In Argentina, he has solidified access to lithium, the mineral most crucial to Tesla’s batteries.
Musk has slammed Biden for his decisions on electric vehicle promotion and subsidies, most of which have favored unionized U.S. auto manufacturers. Musk and his Tesla are viciously anti-union.
But something deeper is going on. Musk, Thiel, Murdoch, and their cronies are backing a movement against democracy.
Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech financier, has written, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
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