Elon Musk, Joe Lonsdale, and tech elites back a pro-Trump super PAC
Several close friends of Elon Musk, including Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, venture capitalist Doug Leone, and investor and podcast host David Sacks, have donated lavishly to a super PAC backing former President Donald Trump — and The Wall Street Journal reports that Musk plans on donating as much as $45 million a month to America PAC. In a post on X, Musk replied to the Journal’s article with a meme claiming it was “fake gnus” (fake news), though Bloomberg reported this weekend that he had already contributed an undisclosed amount to the super PAC.
Musk endorsed Trump on Saturday following the assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and praised Trump’s selection of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. Several of Musk’s friends and business associates have contributed to the PAC, and others have reportedly said they’d do so. Multiple America PAC donors attended a $50,000-a-head fundraiser hosted by Sacks — the host of the All-In podcast, who decried “Democrat rule” in San Francisco in a Monday speech at the Republican National Convention — according to The Washington Post.
Recent financial disclosures show America PAC has raised more than $8.7 million since June. Founded in May by prominent Republican campaign finance lawyer Chris Gober, the PAC is focused on registering voters and encouraging early and mail-in voting in swing states, one source told the Journal. America PAC has reportedly hired hundreds of employees. In June, The New York Times reported that the PAC spent more than $6.6 million on behalf of Trump in a two-week period, most of which went toward “canvassing/field operations.”
“We believe that four more years of Joe Biden is a grave threat to the financial and physical safety of the United States,” an unnamed America PAC spokesperson said in a statement to The New York Times.
Other donors include Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, early PayPal executive Ken Howery, and Valor Equity Partners founder Antonio Gracias, a former member of Tesla’s board of directors. Keith Rabois, a managing director at Khosla Ventures, told the Financial Times he would donate $1 million to the PAC. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz told employees of their eponymous investment firm that they planned on donating to the PAC, The Information says. Andreessen and Horowitz reportedly told employees that they expect Trump to be more lax on industries like cryptocurrency.
Correction, July 17th: An earlier version misstated the name of Antonio Gracias’s investment firm. It is Valor Equity Partners, not Valor Energy Partners.
