Elon Musk is Funding the Nativist Assault to Undermine American Democracy

Musk gave $50 million for the ugliest ads in ‘22 and is normalizing the dehumanizing rhetoric core to the GOP’s ‘24 election messaging.

Nearing the close of the midterm election two years ago, baseball fans were forced to endure the ugly, nativism of white nationalist Stephen Miller’s brand of politics in an ad that played during the MLB playoffs. Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik described the ad as an “openly racist commercial blaming President Biden and other Democrats for illegal immigration.” The ad was run by Citizens for Sanity (CoS), a “dark money” super PAC, closely aligned with Miller. The staff of CoS is the same as Stephen Miller’s America First Legal. We didn’t know who provided the massive funding for these vile ads - until this week. In an exclusive report this week, the Wall Street Journal exposed that the operation was funded by Elon Musk. The Journal found that Musk had donated more than $50 million to the Miller-aligned organization for the strategic racist ads.  

Musk’s massive influx of cash allowed CoS to jump to the overall eighth-largest spender in the 2022 midterm elections despite only being incorporated in June of that year. CoS spent tens of millions of dollars across battleground states targeting the Senate candidates with TV, digital, and print ads with messages that falsely demagogued immigrants about crime and taking benefits from US-born citizens, and peddled ugly transphobic bigotry. There is no correlation between immigrants and crime, while the sort of mass deportation efforts Miller advocates would be disastrous for working families. But the hope was that the tens of millions of dollars to spread these nativist lies looking to divide across every racial and ethnic line would deliver key wins at the ballot box. They didn’t. 

In our analysis after the 2022 midterm elections, Miller’s strategy failed to deliver despite this massive influx of cash from the reactionary billionaire. In the Senate races in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Georgia, where CoS spent Musk’s $50 million on Miller’s strategy, all failed to deliver a win. And there is evidence that CoS messages worked for their base, but had a backlash effect on key constituents. The Immigration Hub tested a CoS ad on crime and immigration with battleground voters and observed a measurable backlash.

The apparent lesson the GOP took from Miller’s multi-million dollar failure was a need to lean in harder with more extreme rhetoric and lots more money. This year, Republican-aligned campaigns have already spent well over half a billion dollars, $640.7M according to AdImpact data, on anti-immigrant ads. More often than not, these ads' radical nativist rhetoric are hardly indistinguishable from the CoS ads from 2022, and many are much worse, peddling the deadly white nationalist replacement theory. And this was always the danger of handing over $50 million to the nation's leading white nationalist sympathizer. That kind of scratch goes a long way to normalizing the dehumanizing rhetoric, normalizing that gave the permission structure for others to use the dehumanizing rhetoric favored by Miller, CoS, and now, as we found out, Elon Musk.    

This rhetoric includes the so-called great replacement theory, the conspiratorial and white nationalist lie that actively seeks to undermine American democracy and has been the inspiration for multiple domestic terrorist attacks by claiming that there is a plot by globalist elites to facilitate an invasion of non-white migrants to be able to cast fraudulent votes in order to steal the upcoming election and ultimately replace White Americans. Miller and Musk, among others, have worked to normalize this deadly anti-democratic lie ahead of the election this November as part of an effort to use their fear-mongering about immigrants to popularize the idea that the results of the election are fraudulent if Trump doesn't win this November.

In the summer of 2023, CoS cut a horrific ad that almost perfectly echoed older versions of the replacement theory that Miller was intimately familiar with. The ad opens up with a voice-over claiming that “France opened their doors to migrants and now those migrants and their children are sacking Paris,” followed by an image of street fire with bold text that reads, “jihad has come to France.” This racist ad runs as if it is a trailer for the plot of the replacement theory novel “The Camp of the Saints.”  This obscure French novel from the 1970s is one that Miller repeatedly tried to get Breitbart to cover when he was pitching stories to the right-wing blog back when he worked for then-Senator Jeff Sessions. This replacement theory ad from CoS then asks the rhetorical question, “is America next?” over an image of an idyllic suburb. The ad concludes with a fiery image with text that reads, “stop mass migration before it's too late.”  While little to no money was spent airing the ad, and it has since been scrubbed from their profiles, it is indicative of the core lie Miller, Musk, and CoS would continue to push.

This push to normalize the replacement theory inside the ranks of the GOP has been largely successful as they are now working to sell the racist lie to the American people. Just one metric is the number of TV ads that are peddling the replacement theory rhetoric about a migrant invasion. According to data from AdImpact, Republicans have spent $44.3 million on replacement theory invasion ads. That is over an eleven-fold increase from a similar figure in 2022. But as we have been documenting the embrace of the replacement theory is now ubiquitous amongst the ranks of Republicans and the cornerstone of their 2024 campaign message as they spread the Big Lie 2.0. 

Despite what the apologists for Musk, like Jeremy Peters at the New York Times, would like to believe, the Journal’s report reveals that Musk’s role in funding the leading nativist zealots and proponents of the white nationalist replacement theory started well before he took to his platform this year to do the same. Notably, Gene Hamilton, who works for Miller’s America First Legal and Citizens for Sanity, was also a leading architect of Trump's family separation policy and a leading contributor to Project 2025.  Musk’s largess likely helped line Hamilton’s pockets but, more importantly, helped Hamilton push his nativist politics onto the American people.

The Journal also reported that Musk funneled at least $5 million to the pro-Ron DeSantis PAC, Never Back Down. The man overseeing the superPAC was none other than Ken Cuccinelli. The lead author for the DHS section of the Project 2025 mandate, Cuccinelli has a long history as an anti-immigrant zealot who has a habit of using dehumanizing and animalistic rhetoric when discussing immigrants. Cuccinelli also has been the leading proponent for the GOP to adopt the replacement theory as the legal argument to justify their draconian immigration agenda, arguing that migrants constitute a literal military-style invasion with states being able to invoke war powers to repel the desperate and destitute people seeking safety inside the United States. It’s the same argument that the white nationalist domestic terrorists who murdered 23 in El Paso, 13 in Pittsburgh, and 10 in Buffalo made to justify their murderous attacks. Musk’s millions also went to several TV ads from Never Back Down that pushed the DeSantis campaign slogan that called for extrajudicial killings along the southern border.  

This year, Musk has used his platform on X to constantly peddle the replacement theory as he helps the Republican Party sell the Big Lie 2.0. Back in March of this year, Musk had an exchange with now-vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance as they gassed each other up, claiming the elements of the replacement theory were, in fact, true. An exchange that spread the replacement theory lies was viewed nearly half a million times on the platform. Throughout the year Musk has continued to regularly make and share posts that advance the replacement theory and Big Lie 2.0 conspiracies. Just last weekend, Musk pushed the racist lie, writing, “if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election… Let me explain: if even 1 in 20 illegals become citizens per year, something that the Democrats are expediting as fast as humanly possible, that would be about 2 million new legal voters in 4 years,” followed by a torrent of other nativist disinformation. Musk also hosted a conversation with Trump on the anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists carrying tiki torches took to the streets to chant the replacement theory slogan, “Jews will not replace us, you will not replace us.” As we noted at the time:

“The normalization of the replacement theory continues to be an active threat to public safety and American democracy.  Whether it is a coincidence or not, Trump’s choice to sit down with Elon Musk on the 7th anniversary of the white nationalist Charlottesville rally is a revealing one, following Musk’s role in amplifying the white nationalist riots in the United Kingdom and his consistent pattern of amplifying the replacement theory. It won’t be a conversation of substance but one that actively puts American working families at risk.” 

Musk’s lies have gotten so bad that this week, even the right-wing Washington Examiner fact-checked one of his recent fabrications about immigrants and voting.

The nativist lies Musk has funded, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, to help Republicans win office is not just about securing political power but justifying the radical plans for mass expulsions and undermining American democracy. This isn’t just a story about a reactionary billionaire looking to use his wealth and influence to tilt American politics to his interests. Musk is funding and helping to amplify those telling nativist lies to justify ending America’s democratic experiment. Musk may be an immigrant to the nation who has helped him become wealthy beyond belief, but he is now using the wealth and soft power to undermine confidence in American democracy and install those whose central goal is to purge the nation of immigrants and those they deem un-American.