Elon Musk - Can't do GOTV but Can do Ratfu👑

[blogslug]

From Talking Points Memo
archive link: https://archive.ph/kTL50

Elon Musk’s Fake Sites and Fake Texts Impersonating the Harris Campaign

There’s deeply cynical and then there’s things which might be illegal. In the first category we have an Elon Musk-funded PAC microtargeting Jewish and Arab communities with diametrically opposed ads about Kamala Harris’s support for Israel or Palestine. Amazingly cynical. But then you have what I’m going to describe next which comes from another Musk-funded dark money operation. They have set up fake sites impersonating the Harris campaign using fake policy positions and then sending out text messages also impersonating the campaign which aim to drive voters to the fake site. (A lot of potential legal and regulatory questions turns on word like “fake” and “impersonating”, which we’ll return to in a moment.)

I found out about this from this article by Anna Massoglia at OpenSecrets. As far as I can tell she’s the first to report it. The project is the work of Building America’s Future PAC, which seems to be largely and perhaps now entirely funded by Elon Musk. It’s part of a network of Musk-funded PACs which are run and/or organized by a group of operatives who ran Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential campaign. America PAC is another of these entities organized with the same money and by the same operatives. That’s the one doing the canvassing and get out the vote operations.

As Massoglia reports, in late September Building America’s Future set up a site called Progress 2028 which purports to be Kamala Harris’s response or counter to Project 2025. The site is designed to have the general appearance of a Harris site in the sense of being in favor of gun regulation, supportive of gender-affirming care, etc. but with wildly over-the-top versions of those policies. So for instance, it calls for minor children to be able to get sex change operations at school without the knowledge of or interference from parents, calls for a mandatory gun buy-back program etc.

The PAC also funded a text message campaign which pushes the same fake policy messages impersonating Harris’s campaign and drives recipients of the texts to the site...

[Kid Berwyn]

1. Musk wants to be a trillionaire.

He, along with the rest of the billionaires, need be taxed back into the millionaire class.

[Maru Kitteh]

3. Musk wants so much more than money.

Musk owns more than 2/3 of the world's satellites, and has plans to put over 40,000 operating satellites in orbit. Why do you suppose that is? Look around at your life and the life of your loved ones. What if someone had a temper tantrum and turned off all the satellites tonight? How difficult would it suddenly be to get information about what's going on? What about your banking and utilities? How confident are you that you would be able to rely on them with no satellites? What is a trip to the gas station or the grocery store going to look like?

He'll take your money, sure, but that's not his goal.

[Kid Berwyn]

4. All that may be so, but it was NASA that did the heavy lifting.

Musk is the beneficiary, thanks in large part to the Obama Administration “privatizing” space exploration. NASA pioneered the concepts and developed the technology. Until Musk and Bezos and their billions, no individual could afford to do what required the budget of a superpower.

Agree about Musk being interested in other things, too. To me, he seems to be an uneducated Hugo Drax.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. Exclusive: Trump ground game in key states flagged as potentially fake

The ground game or GOTV efforts is usually not outsourced. Here this key part of the campaign was outsourced to Musk who is an idiot and does not understand campaigns or US politics.

Link to tweet

NEW — Trump may fail to reach thousands of voters in AZ and NV, with roughly 25% of door-knocks done by Elon Musk’s America PAC this week flagged internally as potentially fraudulent, per leaked data and people familiar.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/19/trump-campaign-leaked-data-voters-elon-musk

Donald Trump’s campaign may be failing to reach thousands of voters they hope to turn out in Arizona and Nevada, with roughly a quarter of door-knocks done by America Pac flagged by its canvassing app as potentially fraudulent, according to leaked data and people familiar with the matter.

The potentially fake door-knocks – when canvassers falsely claim to have visited a home – could present a serious setback for Trump as he and Kamala Harris remain even in the polls with fewer than 20 days until an election.

The Trump campaign earlier this year outsourced the bulk of its ground game to America Pac, the political action committee founded by Elon Musk, betting that spending millions to turn out Trump supporters, especially those who don’t typically vote, would boost returns.

But leaked America Pac data obtained by the Guardian shows that roughly 24% of the door-knocks in Arizona and 25% of the door-knocks in Nevada this week were flagged under “unusual survey logs” by the Campaign Sidekick canvassing app.......

The Trump campaign took a gamble this cycle when it outsourced the bulk of its ground game to political action committees, after the Federal Election Commission​ earlier this year for the first time allowed campaigns to coordinate its voter turnout efforts with ​outside groups.

The campaign initially envisaged multiple pacs helping to drive the Trump vote, but America Pac ultimately became the largest and most ambitious of the outside groups as it poured more than $29.8m into its field operation for Trump and became the only Pac with a material presence in every battleground state.

The largest of the other Pacs involved with doing field work, such as Turning Point Action and America ​First Works, have a smaller footprint. Turning Point’s team in Wisconsin has also since been subsumed into America Pac’s operation, two people familiar with the matter said.