Plutocracies Thrive in Darkness

Musk and the monied class are taking over

Credit: Getty Images

Elon Musk has been dubbed Donald Trump’s “First Buddy” — a riff, I assume, on the title First Lady. The moniker seems innocuous, almost cute. It is anything but.

Musk now has unchecked access to Donald Trump. He is a regular fixture at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. He has sat in on calls with world leaders and has met with the Republican leadership in Congress. Trump has tasked Musk with implementing “drastic” reforms in the federal government as the head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency — a convenient job for a man with many multimillion-dollar federal contracts.

Here’s the price tag for all this access: $277 million. That’s how much Musk spent to help elect Trump, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. No surprise, that’s more than any individual has ever spent on a single election.

And for all that money, you too could be co-president.

The Trump campaign claimed it was all about lifting up average Americans. Here’s the reality: So far Trump has packed his administration with at least a dozen billionaires.

Musk, the electric car maker, rocket builder, X owner, and richest person in the world is a private citizen. He is also unelected. He has not been vetted by the FBI, nor will he have to be confirmed by the Senate. According to The Wall Street Journal, Musk has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms, and ketamine, any of which would keep him from passing a government background check. He will be unconstrained by conflict of interest rules that normally govern civil servants. The fox isn’t just guarding the proverbial hen house, he bought it — chickens, coop, and all.

Musk only became a U.S. citizen in 2002, after working here illegally on an expired student visa, a hypocritical irony for someone who claims undocumented immigrants are destroying America. In an interview with Tucker Carlson he (kind of) joked, “I’m f***ed” if Trump loses the election. He went on to wonder how long his prison sentence would be.

The Trump-Musk bromance is a bit unexpected. Historically, the two men with super-sized egos have had a frosty relationship. It thawed quickly in July when Musk endorsed Trump after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. Then the floodgates opened, and Musk’s money poured in.

Musk is prohibited from running for president since he was born in South Africa, so he has bought his way into power in a very big way. The more than a quarter of a billion dollars he invested in Trump amounts to less than 1% of Musk’s net worth. It’s paid off big time. Musk’s personal bottom line has grown by more than $100 billion since Election Day, as the value of stock in his various companies has skyrocketed. Musk certainly can be credited with seizing a great financial opportunity.

Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s closest advisers, credits Musk with Trump’s election victory. “He [Musk] came in with the money and the professionals. To be brutally frank, it’s the reason we won,” said Bannon in an interview with Puck.

You might wonder how it is possible for one person to give so much money to a single candidate. You need to go back 14 years to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which changed everything. It eliminated any restrictions on campaign fundraising and spending. Individuals, corporations, and labor unions could now give as much as they want — not to the candidates directly, but to “super PACs.”

These political action committees have allowed billionaires to dominate politics and steer politicians. The American Bar Association, in a piece about Citizens United, described super PACs as a necessary evil of the political process. “In the arms race of political fundraising, super PACs are nuclear weapons; candidates who lack them are at a fundamental, and typically insurmountable, disadvantage.”

Citizens United has unintentionally, or perhaps not so unintentionally, turned our democracy into a plutocracy, a government ruled by the wealthy.

The Supreme Court did apply a few guardrails, but many campaigns have flouted those rules. The justices’ insistence on the disclosure of donors’ names begat the advent of “dark money.” Dark money is spent to influence elections without disclosing the funding’s source. The uber-wealthy give to super PACs anonymously by funneling their donation through third parties like nonprofits or corporations created expressly for this purpose. Though the practice is illegal, the Federal Election Commission has thus far not enforced the law.

The Supreme Court also sought to require super PACs to act independently of the campaigns they support. The PACs and the campaigns are not supposed to have any contact or coordination.

According to David Plouffe, senior adviser to the Harris campaign, the Democrats play by this rule, while the other side does not. “We have to stop playing a different game as it relates to super PACs than the Republicans,” Plouffe told “POD Save America.” “We cannot be at a disadvantage.”

The only chance for any kind of campaign finance fix is the U.S. Congress. You might expire holding your breath waiting for those who benefit from the unfettered flow of dark money to do anything to stem it.

As for Musk, he may outstay his welcome. He has promised that as the “efficiency czar,” he will significantly tighten the federal budget belt, warning that this will cause average Americans financial “hardship.” That won’t go over well with an electorate who chose Donald Trump specifically to improve their economic status.

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Dan