Elon Musk

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Elon Musk gives $75m to pro-Trump group, putting him among the largest Republican donors

      by

      Elon Musk gave around $75m to his pro-Donald Trump spending group in the span of three months, federal disclosures show, underscoring how the billionaire has become crucial to the Republican candidate’s efforts to win the US presidential election.America PAC, which is focused on turning out voters in the closely contested states battleground states that could decide the election, spent around $72m of that in the July-September period, according to disclosures filed to the Federal Election Commission.That is more than any other pro-Trump Super Pac focused on turning out voters. The Trump campaign is broadly reliant on outside groups for canvassing voters, meaning the Super Pac founded by Musk – the world’s richest man – plays an outsized role in the razor-thin election between Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris.Musk, the CEO of electric car manufacturer Tesla, was the sole donor to the group in that period.On Wednesday, he said in a post on X that he will be “giving a series of talks” throughout Pennsylvania, less than two weeks after his appearance with Trump in the state. Musk said people needed to sign a petition on his America PAC website to attend his talks from “tomorrow night through Monday.”Pennsylvania is considered a crucial state for both Trump and Harris in the race for the White House.Musk, who has said he has voted for Democratic presidential candidates in the past, has taken a sharp turn to the right this election. He endorsed Trump in July and appeared with him at a rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month.Musk’s donations to America PAC propel him into the exclusive club of Republican mega donors, a list that also includes banking heir Timothy Mellon and casino billionaire Miriam Adelson.However, it was reported earlier this month that Musk has secretly funded a conservative political group for years, well before his public embrace of Trump.America PAC declined to comment on the Musk donations. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.America PAC is focused on encouraging Americans who like Trump but don’t always vote to cast ballots this cycle, a high-risk, labor-intensive strategy by the Trump campaign.The group, which started its work later in the election than other Pacs, has encountered some problems with hiring and its contractors. Since July, it has fired two major contractors it has hired to knock on doors.It has also struggled to hire door knockers in several battleground states in part because by the time the Pac became operational many other canvassing groups had already staffed up, a half-dozen sources briefed on the issues told Reuters.The group had about $4m left on hand by the end of September, the filings show.Separate filings earlier on Tuesday showed that Miriam Adelson, the casino magnate, donated $95m to another pro-Trump Super Pac, Preserve America PAC, in the same period. More

    • 300 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Hurricane Milton has left two worlds in its wake. Elon Musk lives in one of them. The other is called reality | Marina Hyde

      by

      I increasingly wonder why Elon Musk is bothering trying to establish himself on Mars, and not just because it looks like a complete dump up there. (Seriously, if you think that’s beautiful, I have around a hundred thousand disused quarries I’d love to show you right here on Earth.) Watching Hurricane Milton play out on Musk’s platform and elsewhere cemented the notion that the goal of being on another planet along with millions of people had already occurred. The only problem is that this whole other planet is here, sharing meatspace with what we used to call “reality”.Once upon a time, relatively recently in the scheme of things, a looming natural disaster would have felt like a fairly ineluctable fact. You couldn’t “debate” a natural disaster any more than you could disagree with gravity. There is a point, we used to say, where you really can’t argue with reality. There is a point where shit gets real. But is there, any more? Certainly that point has receded much further over a still-darkening horizon than we might even have imagined back in, say, 2016, when people were warning of attempts to destroy the very notion of shared reality. In fact, it was already receding back in 2004, when a Bush administration official (widely believed to be Karl Rove) spoke disparagingly of what they called “the reality-based community”.In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene last month, and in the days leading up to Hurricane Milton’s landfall, it was possible to see the truly grim extent of the slippage in recent years. It wasn’t just in senior politicians using phrases such as “politicising the storm”, a way of talking about a terrifyingly destructive natural phenomenon that would once have seemed like a quote from a satire, but now seems a long-unremarkable part of daily discourse. Nor was it in the widespread questioning that the storm was even a natural phenomenon at all, with huge numbers out there on the platforms declaring it to have been literally “created” and “engineered” by the other side. It was the sense that whatever happened, people had a version of reality they would be sticking to. Their views are battened down and not even a hurricane is going to shift them.“Yes they can control the weather,” explained the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (on X, of course). “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” One customary reaction to Marjorie is to remark that it’s as if she’s on another planet. I so wish she was. The problem is that she and her fellow settlers are here, walking among all the agency officials and disaster experts and emergency workers who have to deal with reality as it presents itself – and not reality as whatever rubbish advances your cause that day.But on she sails, because the civilisation of Another Planet is considerably advanced. You no longer ask if life is sustainable on this planet. It is not just sustainable – it is sustained. Not only does it have well-established communications systems, but also a rapidly spawning language where words can mean their opposites. Another Planet has a thriving media, and a social media presence actively boosted and financially incentivised by the likes of Musk – which arguably had its coming-of-age party over these past weeks. Musk himself shared what he said was a note from a SpaceX engineer falsely claiming that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) was “actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping … ” Don’t worry, only 41m people have viewed the post.In addition to oligarchs such as Musk, Another Planet has its own politicians who advance its interests, most notably Donald Trump, who has had what the polls suggest was a good storm. And don’t forget the foot soldiers. On TikTok, you could scroll through miles of fake videos of flooded Florida cities before Milton had even hit the areas purporting to be shown. After Helene last month, Fema launched a dedicated “rumour response” page. Barely two weeks on, the scale of the task has already overwhelmed defences. Rumour response pages were instantly rebranded as government cover-ups (the Jews were behind this one too, would you believe). According to an urgent dispatch from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, just 33 posts containing claims debunked by Fema, the White House and the US government had already been viewed more than 160m times before Helene hit.Meanwhile, Another Planet has harnessed sophisticated technology in the form of AI. When told an AI image she’d shared of a sobbing child in a canoe with a puppy was entirely fake, RNC committee member Amy Kremer said she didn’t care and was leaving it up because it was “emblematic”. We’re now in an era when Another Planet feels confident enough to let you behind the curtain, because you’ll still believe it anyway. Kremer butching it out is just the latest version of JD Vance’s insouciant declaration last month that, of course, he creates false stories such as pets being eaten by Haitian immigrants. He does it, he says, so that the media “actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people”.Maybe most worryingly, Another Planet constantly suggests it will defend itself by force if necessary. One way to fight a “weather weapon” is by making a death threat against a meteorologist. Or, indeed, multiple death threats against multiple meteorologists. Another way is call for militias to attack Fema for “withholding aid”. Another way is to threaten to shoot first responders. Again, honestly the only problem with this community is that it’s right here on Earth. I’m sure they’d say that we in the world’s reality-based community are occupying them – but it’s pretty finely balanced. Ask me again in a month, by which time it might feel as if they are occupying us.

      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

      A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Hurricanes, the Middle East, and Covid-19 tests to Putin – podcast

      by

      It’s less than a month before the US presidential election. Donald Trump is pushing conspiracy theories over the federal response to hurricanes battering several states, and denying he gave Covid-19 test machines to Vladimir Putin during the pandemic. Joe Biden is in talks with Benjamin Netanyahu over growing tension in the Middle East. Kamala Harris rattled through a media blitz, with some criticising her campaign strategy. And Melania Trump has written about being pro-abortion and pro-immigration in her new memoir.
      Jonathan Freedland and the veteran political strategist David Axelrod discuss what all of this means for the election

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

    • 200 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Why are Democrats tarred as elites when the world’s richest man funds Trump? | Robert Reich

      by

      On 5 October, at Donald Trump’s second rally of the 2024 election in Butler, Pennsylvania, he enthusiastically introduced Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, who is plunking down millions of dollars to help the former president.Musk urged the crowd to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” – echoing words Trump uttered after the attack on his life there. Musk then shouted: “President Trump must win to preserve the constitution!” and he “must win to preserve democracy in America!” Musk ended his rant with the dark prediction: “If they don’t [vote], this will be the last election.”Musk has established himself as the quintessential robber baron of the United States’s second Gilded Age.In mid-August, during a conversation between Musk and Trump on Twitter/X, Trump praised Musk for firing workers who went on strike. “You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump said. “You walk in and say: ‘You want to quit?’ … They go on strike and you say: ‘That’s OK. You’re all gone.’” Musk responded, “Yeah,” and laughed.More than a century ago, in the US’s first Gilded Age, the idea that someone running for president would feature at a rally the richest person in the country, let alone the world, would have been absurd. At that time, even Republican candidates sought to distance themselves from the robber barons.Kamala Harris is waging a strong campaign but it could be even stronger if she wielded more anti-corporate and more anti-robber-baron economic populism.As in the first Gilded Age, the most powerful force in US politics today is anti-establishment fury at a rigged system.But because Democrats – with the notable exceptions of Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Bob Casey, and Sherrod Brown – have not embraced economic populism, the only version of populism available to angry voters has been the Republican’s cultural one, which is utterly fake.During the first Gilded Age, economic populism predominated because millions of Americans saw that wealth and power concentrated at the top was undermining US democracy and stacking the economic deck.In 1910, Teddy Roosevelt thundered his warning that “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power” could destroy US democracy. Roosevelt’s answer was to tax wealth. The estate tax was eventually enacted in 1916, and the capital gains tax in 1922.In the 1912 presidential campaign, Woodrow Wilson promised “a crusade against powers that have governed us … that have limited our development … that have determined our lives … that have set us in a straitjacket to do as they please”. The struggle to break up the giant trusts would be, in Wilson’s words, a “second struggle for emancipation”.Wilson signed into law the Clayton Antitrust Act, which strengthened antitrust laws and protected unions. He also established the Federal Trade Commission to root out “unfair acts and practices in commerce”, and created the first permanent national income tax.Years later, Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth-cousin, Franklin D Roosevelt, attacked corporate and financial power by giving workers the right to unionize, the 40-hour workweek, unemployment insurance, and social security. FDR instituted a high marginal income tax on the wealthy – those making more than $5m a year were taxed up to 75% – and he regulated finance.Accepting renomination for president in 1936, FDR spoke of the need to redeem US democracy from the despotism of concentrated economic power. He warned the nation against the “economic royalists” who had pressed the whole of society into service.On the eve of his 1936 re-election, he told the American people that big business and finance were determined to unseat him: “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me – and I welcome their hatred.”But by the 1950s, the Democratic party had given up on economic populism. Gone from their presidential campaigns were tales of greedy businessmen, unscrupulous financiers and monopolistic corporations.There no longer seemed any need. Postwar prosperity had created the largest middle class in the history of the world and reduced the gap between rich and poor. By the mid-1950s, a third of all private-sector employees were unionized, and blue-collar workers were receiving generous wage and benefit increases regularly.Keynesianism had become a widely accepted antidote to economic downturns – substituting the management of aggregate demand for class antagonism. Even Richard Nixon purportedly claimed: “We’re all Keynesians now.”There was a second reason for the Democrats’ increasing unease with populism. The civil rights struggle and the Vietnam war had spawned an anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian New Left that distrusted government as much if not more than it distrusted Wall Street and big business.The New Left viewed the war as a symbol of all that was rotten in the US, including the Democratic establishment that waged it. The Democratic establishment viewed the anti-war New Left as entitled children, who focused on personal expression and idealism rather than labor activism and the alleviation of poverty.That split was dramatically revealed during the violent protests at the 1968 Democratic national convention in Chicago. It lived on: a half-century later, it could be seen in Bernie Sanders’ candidacy in the 2016 primaries and the struggle within the Democratic party between his populists and Hillary Clinton’s mainstream Democrats.The Republican party, meanwhile, embraced cultural populism. In Ronald Reagan’s view, Washington insiders and arrogant bureaucrats stifled the economy and hobbled individual achievement. Cultural elites coddled the poor, including “welfare queens”, Reagan’s racist dog-whistle.Reagan’s cultural critique took hold of the Republican party. In the 2004 presidential election, Republicans framed Democrats as an effete group of “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing [and] Hollywood-loving” people out of touch with the real America.By the 2020s, Republicans saw the culture wars as the central struggle of American public life. Trump has blamed the country’s problems on immigrants, Democrats, socialists, the mainstream media, the “deep state” (including the FBI, justice department, prosecutors, and unfriendly judges), “coastal elites”, and, wherever possible (and usually indirectly), women and people of color.Republican cultural populism is bogus. The biggest change over the last four decades – the change lurking behind the insecurities and resentments of the working middle class, the change that animates America’s second Gilded Age – has had nothing to do with identity politics, “woke”-ism, critical race theory, transgender kids, immigration, or any other Republican cultural bogeymen.It’s the giant upward shift in the distribution of income and wealth; in the power and status that accompany it; and the injuries to pride, status, and self-esteem suffered by those who have lost it.The Democrats’ failure to critique this shift and adapt economic populism has made the Republicans’ fake cultural populism dominant by default.Why haven’t Democrats embraced economic populism? Because for too long they’ve drunk from the same campaign funding trough as the Republicans – big corporations, Wall Street and the very wealthy.“Business has to deal with us whether they like it or not, because we’re the majority,” crowed the Democratic representative Tony Coelho, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 1980s when Democrats assumed they’d continue to run the House for years.Coelho’s Democrats soon achieved a rough parity with Republicans in contributions from corporate and Wall Street campaign coffers, but it proved a Faustian bargain.Now, Trump boasts the support of the richest man in the world, who’s viciously anti-union, even as Trump pretends to be the “voice” of working America – and the Democrats don’t even challenge the hypocrisy.As I said, Harris is waging a good campaign. But she and many of her fellow Democrats could be more vocal about how ultra-wealthy individuals and giant corporations are undermining and corrupting America.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Giggling Elon Musk revisits ‘joke’ about Kamala Harris assassination

      by

      Elon Musk has said it would be “pointless” to try to kill Kamala Harris weeks after a pressure campaign led to him to delete a social media post expressing surprise that no one had tried to assassinate the vice-president or Joe Biden.The Tesla and Space X entrepreneur re-entered the murky waters of political assassinations in a web video interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson which Musk then posted on the X platform that he owns.Referencing the original comment at the beginning of the one hour and 48 minute exchange, Musk tells Carlson: “I made a joke, which I realised – I deleted – which is like: nobody’s even bothering to try to kill Kamala because it’s pointless. What do you achieve?”Both men dissolved into laughter, with Carlson responding: “It’s deep and true though.”“Just buy another puppet,” Musk continues, before adding: “Nobody’s tried to kill Joe Biden. It’d be pointless.”“Totally,” agrees Carlson.Invited to elaborate on the post, Musk goes on: “Some people interpreted it as though I was calling for people to assassinate her, but I was like … Does it seem strange that no one’s even bothered? Nobody tries to assassinate a puppet … She’s safe.”“That’s hilarious,” Carlson deadpans, as his guest laughs at his own joke.Authorities have notably made multiple arrests of individuals who have made death threats against Harris and Biden. A Virginia man was arrested in August and charged with making threats against the vice-president.Musk’s original comment on X was posted in the immediate aftermath of a suspected second assassination attempt on Donald Trump last month. On 15 September, a man was arrested after a Secret Service agent spotted the barrel of a gun sticking out of bushes at the former president’s golf club in Palm Beach, Florida. A suspect, Ryan Routh, has since been charged with trying to kill Trump. He denies the charges.“And no one’s even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” Musk wrote after the incident, with a emoji symbolising puzzlement attached.Musk, a vocal and committed supporter of Trump’s campaign to re-enter the White House, later deleted the post amid an angry backlash and comments from the Secret Service that it was “aware” of it.“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on 𝕏,” he later wrote in explanation.“Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”The interviewer then laughed uproariously after suggesting to his guest: “If he [Trump] loses man … you’re fucked, dude.”Musk bantered back: “I’m fucked. If he loses, I’m fucked.”To the sound of general background laughter and Carlson’s obvious delight, the tech billionaire continued: “How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be. Will I see my children, I don’t know.”Musk’s latest assassination comments came just days after he appeared on stage with Trump last weekend at the same site in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a would-be assassin tried to kill the ex-president on 13 July. In that instance, Trump’s ear was grazed with a bullet and a rally-goer was shot dead before the perpetrator himself was killed by a Secret Service agent.Trump was endorsed by Musk moments after that attempt. He later said he would appoint Musk to lead a government efficiency commission if he became president again.The Secret Service – which stepped up its security protection for Trump following criticism of its failure to prevent the first assassination attempt – has said it is familiar with Musk’s latest comments, according to the Washington Post. More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Every day is a new conspiracy’: behind Trump’s ironclad grip on rightwing media

      by

      In the last few months, Donald Trump has done interviews with rightwing Twitch streamer Adin Ross and a host of podcasters, including Dr Phil, comedian Theo Von, computer scientist Lex Fridman, and YouTuber Logan Paul – part of what the Atlantic has dubbed Trump’s “red-pill podcast tour”.He’s posted incessantly on his own social media platform, Truth Social. He did a live space on Twitter/X with the platform’s owner, Elon Musk. He talked with Fox’s Laura Ingraham and called into Fox & Friends and spoke to other Fox hosts and personalities.His media strategy aligns with the current state of the rightwing media landscape: Fox is still a dominant source, but for the most Maga-adherent, it’s not Trumpy enough, despite some of its hosts embracing election denialism around the 2020 US election. Instead, there’s increasing fragmentation thanks to influencers and lesser-known outlets built around Trumpism.This is the first election since Tucker Carlson, once Fox’s loudest voice in a primetime spot, was reportedly fired by the network, and his solo ventures so far haven’t taken on the prominence he had on TV. It’s also the first election since longtime Republican heavyweight Rush Limbaugh died. These big changes have left holes in rightwing media, which were filled by an increasing cadre of influencers, content creators and smaller outlets.Adrianna Munoz, a 58-year-old from Queens, New York, who attended a Trump rally earlier this year in the Bronx, told the Guardian that she mostly gets news from YouTube, X and conservative commentators she follows, such as Tim Pool and Benny Johnson.“I used to watch TV news every morning – network news and the local news channel in New York,” she said. “Now I don’t. They sold out. They don’t tell you the truth. I don’t want to hear that rubbish.”Trump’s grip on rightwing media is ironclad, said Julie Millican, the vice-president of Media Matters, a progressive center that tracks conservative media. In the past, the Republican party and its candidates would follow what rightwing media did and align its policies that way – but now, the media follows Trump, she said.“If you don’t capitulate to what Trump and his enablers and his supporters are looking for, then they’ll shut you out,” Millican said. Since his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his influence has only increased, and “now he has a stronger control over the entire media ecosystem than he did previously”, she added.As rightwing outlets rise, the stories they cover differ more from what’s on mainstream news, furthering the bubbles a divided United States lives within. While in years past, you’d find different takes on the day’s news in left- and right-leaning outlets, you’ll now find stories that exist solely on rightwing media, Millican said.“It’s like every day is a new conspiracy or a new attack, and it’s just hard to even keep up on it anymore,” she said. “Half the time, when you listen to somebody who consumes nothing but rightwing media, you have no idea what they’re talking about.”TV news and rightwing websitesTraffic to news websites, including rightwing sites, is down compared with 2020. Howard Polskin, who tracks conservative media on his site The Righting, said a few factors play into the decrease. Facebook and other Meta social media de-emphasize news content now, sending less traffic to news outlets. And 2020 had several major news events colliding: a pandemic that kept people online more, nationwide protests over racial justice and a hotly contested election.Polskin tracks monthly visits to rightwing sites and produces traffic reports. The top 10 for August 2024: Fox, Outkick (a sports and commentary site owned by Fox), Newsmax, Epoch Times, National Review, Washington Times, Daily Wire, TheBlaze, Washington Examiner and Daily Caller. Gateway Pundit is not far behind, and InfoWars, the once-maligned site headed by bankrupted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, is in the top 20.View image in fullscreenNo single star has taken the place that Carlson or Limbaugh once held. Some conservatives told the Guardian they stopped watching Fox as often after Carlson left or because the network isn’t Maga enough. Fox agreed to pay $787m to settle a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems over defamation claims for spreading lies about the voting machine company’s role the 2020 election. Carlson abruptly left the network shortly after the settlement, and he has claimed his firing came as a result of the settlement. Fox denies that his removal had anything to do with the Dominion case.Frank Lipsett, a 63-year-old from the south Bronx who works as a residential housing superintendent, said he watches Fox because it’s “the most honest and most informative outlet, though I’m not saying they are perfect”.Like many on the right, he has stopped reading mainstream newspapers because “they are not telling the truth.” He said he sometimes reads the New York Post, a rightwing tabloid paper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, the same owner as Fox.Another paper, Epoch Times, a far-right and anti-China outlet associated with the Falun Gong religion, continues to rank highly among conservative news outlets despite a justice department lawsuit that alleges it operates as a money laundering and cryptocurrency scam. Its stories are often shared by rightwing politicians or influencers. “Their cultural impact and political impact seems much smaller than the distribution,” Polskin said.Carlene, a 58-year-old from the Upper East Side who attended the Trump rally in the Bronx, said she gets news from the Epoch Times, Daily Wire and X and sometimes tunes into CNN and MSNBC to get the other side.“I watch less Fox News now after they got rid of Tucker Carlson,” she said. “It made me think Fox was just like everyone else.”For the less online Republican, talk radio shows, especially those that run the airwaves in rural areas, play a strong role in setting the conservative message. As newspapers in rural areas have shuttered, creating a crisis in local news, these radio shows are “reaching voters that aren’t tapped into the same media spaces that we often see in these large metropolises on either coast”, Tripodi said.To fill Fox’s void on TV, some conservatives have turned to Newsmax or One American News Network, which are farther to the right than Fox.“One American News Network and Newsmax did a very good job at establishing themselves as a place that would verify whatever Trump was saying,” Tripodi said.David Fiedler, a 67-year-old retiree from Rock county, Wisconsin, told the Guardian at the Republican National Committee’s Protect the Vote tour in September that he and his wife don’t watch Fox or local news, but they stream podcasts by the Daily Wire or watch Rumble, the rightwing video platform.“Our biggest news thing we watch is Newsmax,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPodcasts and influencersBeyond television and news sites, a rightwing news consumer will find a growing landscape of podcasts, YouTube channels, Substack newsletters, documentary film-makers and social media influencers all trying to build a following.“For every laid-off journalist, another Substack is born,” Polskin said. “And that just … fractionalizes the news audience even more.”The top of the podcast charts on Spotify and Apple shows a host of conservatives: Shawn Ryan, Candace Owens, Carlson, Megyn Kelly.Ben Shapiro, the conservative commentator, has his own podcast, and his network, the Daily Wire, hosts some of the biggest rightwing pundits. “In terms of just influence and power in the media landscape, to me, he would be someone that’s at the top of that space,” Millican said. Polskin called Shapiro the “800lb gorilla of rightwing podcasts”.Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, is also a major player. His organization is focused on turning college-age people conservative, and he’s been on a tour around the country to college campuses in recent months, in addition to his podcast and social media presence.“He’s almost become like an establishment media figure in his own right, except you would never actually see him on Fox News – his audience tends to be pretty old,” Millican said.While he doesn’t grab a huge share of the podcast market and he’s currently in prison for defying a congressional subpoena related to the January 6 investigation, Steve Bannon has an outsize influence on the right with his War Room show. He gets big-name rightwing politicians as guests and still has Trump’s ear, but he’s never cracked the top 20 in Polskin’s ratings.“Because of him, Project 2025 got on our radar last year because he was one of the early backers in hosting people who were involved with writing it, promoting the key tenants in it,” Millican said. “Small audience, but still influential audience.”Then there are also conspiracy-based websites and social media accounts from unnamed creators, such as End Wokeness, that spread rightwing attack lines that can filter up to the mainstream.David Jansen, who attended a Trump town hall event in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in August, said he watches FrankSpeech, a platform founded by pillow salesperson and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, which streams conservative content, often centered on election denialism.Social mediaAlongside the rise in rightwing influencers and outlets, social media platforms have loosened their content moderation and made changes to how they manage political content. Republican elected officials and outside legal groups have attacked platforms, government employees who interact with them and misinformation researchers, claiming a broad censorship plan is at work to limit conservative voices online.Some organizing on the right happens on closed-off apps such as Telegram, where public figures from the conservative mainstream and the far-right fringes have channels to share news and commentary.The underbelly of Telegram skews darker than other social media: the New York Times called it a “global sewer of criminal activity, disinformation, child sexual abuse material, terrorism and racist incitement”. Neo-Nazis have used the platform to coordinate their activities and have been scrambling after the app’s founder, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France for facilitating criminal activity on the app, Frontline reported.But rightwing organizing isn’t happening solely in far-flung corners of the internet. There is increased rumor-making and amplification on Musk’s X, including by Musk himself, who has shared a wide variety of election-related falsehoods. Trump returned to the platform last year after he was kicked off after the insurrection, but he still posts mostly on Truth Social, where he often rants in all-caps, shares clips from his rallies or reposts content from rightwing media who boost his campaign.Munoz, one of the Bronx Trump rally attendees, uses Telegram and Truth Social. Munoz loves Musk and his changes to X because “you can talk freely now”, he said. “I left Facebook and Instagram because they don’t let you talk.”Ed Pilkington and Alice Herman contributed reporting to this story More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Donald Trump makes a theatrical return to Butler, scene of assassination attempt

      by

      Donald Trump has returned to the site where he narrowly escaped assassination in July, pushing the emotional buttons of his supporters and suggesting that his political opponents “maybe even tried to kill me” to stop him regaining the White House.The Republican presidential nominee – and perennial showman – mounted an unabashedly sentimental spectacle in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. He was joined by billionaire Elon Musk, who made the baseless claim that if Trump’s supporters fail to turn out, “this will be the last election”.Their joint appearance before an enthusiastic crowd of thousands capped hours of programming seemingly intended to mythologise the 13 July shooting for the Trump base exactly one month before the presidential election.The rally was held, with heightened security, at the same grounds where Trump was grazed in the right ear and one rallygoer – firefighter Corey Comperatore – was killed when a gunman opened fire. The would-be assassin, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper.View image in fullscreenA photo of Trump standing with blood streaked across his face as he raised his fist and shouted “Fight!” became the indelible image of his campaign. Yet Joe Biden’s decision just a week later to step aside and endorse his vice-president, Kamala Harris, stole Trump’s thunder and altered the trajectory of the race.On Saturday Trump became the first former president to return to the scene of his attempted assassination and weaponise it for political gain. His campaign sought to recapture the aura of their candidate as hero and martyr.As he walked out on stage, a video juxtaposed an image of George Washington crossing the Delaware River with the photo of Trump with fist raised. A voice boomed: “This man cannot be stopped. This man cannot be defeated.”“As I was saying …” Trump said as he appeared on stage, gesturing towards an immigration chart that he was looking at when the gunfire began 12 weeks earlier. The crowd, which was overwhelmingly white, roared enthusiastically, holding aloft signs that read “Fight! Fight! Fight!”Standing behind protective glass that now encases the stage at his outdoor rallies, Trump recalled: “On this very ground a cold-blooded assassin aimed to silence me and silence the greatest movement – Maga – in the history of our country … But by the hand of providence and the grace of God that villain did not succeed in his goal. He did not stop our movement.”Trump even seemed to be trying to emulate Abraham Lincoln’s Gettsyburg address as he described the field as a “monument to the valour” of our first responders and prophesied: “Forever afterward, all who have visited this hallowed place will remember what happened here and they will know of the character and courage that so many incredible American patriots have showed.”But Trump also hinted darkly, without evidence, about facing “an enemy from within” more dangerous than any foreign adversary. “Over the past eight years, those who want to stop us from achieving this future have slandered me, impeached me, indicted me, tried to throw me off the ballot, and who knows, maybe even tried to kill me,” he said. “But I’ve never stopped fighting for you and I never will.”Trump saluted volunteer firefighter Comperatore, who was shot and killed by the gunman, and two other supporters who were wounded. A memorial was set up in the bleachers, his firefighter’s jacket surrounded by flowers. Giant screens said “In loving memory of Corey Comperatore”, accompanied by his picture. Comperatore’s family were present.At 6.11pm, the exact time when gunfire erupted on 13 July, Trump called for a moment of silence. A bell then tolled four times, once for each of the four victims, including Trump. Then opera singer Christopher Macchio belted out Ave Maria.Trump then veered into more familiar territory of falsehoods about immigration and other topics. Later he called up on stage Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and owner of social media platform X, who has swerved politically right. Wearing a black cap and black “Occupy Mars” shirt and coat, Musk jumped around with his arms held high and was greeted with cheers.He said: “The true test of someone’s character is how they behave under fire. We had one president who couldn’t climb a flight of stairs and another who was fist-pumping after getting shot! Fight, fight, fight!”Despite Trump’s attempt to stage a coup and cling on to power on 6 January 2021, Musk argued: “President Trump must win to preserve the constitution. He must win to preserve democracy in America. This is a must-win situation. Get everyone you know, drag them to register to vote. If they don’t, this will be the last election. That is my prediction.”View image in fullscreenThe Butler shooting led to widespread criticism of the Secret Service and the resignation of its director. Critics raised concerns about how Crooks was able to access a nearby rooftop with a direct line of sight to where Trump was speaking. In September the former president survived another attempt on his life when a gunman hid undetected for nearly 12 hours at a golf course in one of his Florida clubs.On Saturday there was an intensified security presence with Secret Service and other law enforcement officers in camouflage uniforms stationed on roofs. The building from which Crooks fired was completely obscured by tractor trailers and a fence.The rally had an upbeat atmosphere like a giant picnic. People sat on the grass or foldout chairs and walkers in blazing sunshine. They gazed up into a brilliant blue sky to see four special forces skydivers – one holding a giant Stars and Stripes – jumping from a Cessna 206 plane from more than 5,000 feet, then a flypast of “Trump Force One” accompanied by the theme music from the film Top Gun.One tent displayed paintings of the now famous image of a bloodied Trump with fist raised – reproductions were on sale for up to $200. That photograph was also visible on numerous T-shirts worn by Trump supporters with slogans such as “Fight … fight … fight!”, “American badass”, “Never surrender” and “Fight. Trump 2024. Legends never die”. The commercialisation of the former president’s near death experience was on vivid display.Attendees spoke of their ardent support for Trump, their suspicion that Democrats were behind an assassination plot and that his life had been spared by divine intervention.Patricia King, 82, using a walker, was at the rally in Butler in July with her 63-year-old daughter, Diana, and both felt it was important to return. “I remember the long wait and how hot it was and people being loyal enough to stand there and some of them fainted,” said King, a retired nurse. “I remember the shots going off – pop, pop, pop, pop – and I turned and looked where he was and everybody started running.”King praised Trump’s instinctively combative response that day. “That’s great with me. That’s like: I’m not quitting and that’s what America is about. We don’t quit. Kamala Harris is too weak. I think she’d be asking Putin to have a cup of tea with her, which is not strength to me.”Debbie Hasan, 61, a landlord wearing a Trump 2024 cap, described Saturday’s rally as “history in the making” and recalled the events of 13 July. “I was watching TV and my husband was in the other room. I start screaming: ‘They shot Trump! They shot Trump!’ Then I called my brother and I’m screaming. And then seeing him get up and the fist pump was an awesome sight. He’s a great man.”Hasan outlined a baseless conspiracy theory that Democrats orchestrated the shooting. “I hate to say it, I think they were behind all this. They can’t beat him any other way. They tried putting him in court on all kinds of trumped up charges. They’re at their limit. They don’t know what else to do. They promote hate and prejudice. How they talk about him, some wacko’s going to say, he needs to be keyholed.”View image in fullscreenMany rallygoers echoed Trump’s claim that God saved him in order to save the country. Rodney Moreland, 66, retired from various jobs including welding, truck driving and security, said: “I don’t know if you believe in God but there was an angel around him that day, absolutely. After that happened his demeanour, everything changed about him. Now he’s calm, cool and collected and he’s known what words to say.”But Moreland warned of a possible backlash to the election result. “If it goes the opposite direction, there’s going to be a war. The last election was rigged. They said, we cannot have him stay in office again.”Kristi Masemer, 52, a Walmart worker, wearing a T-shirt that said “I’m still a Trump girl. I make no apologies”, criticised people who said they wished the would-be assassin had killed the former president.“The amount of people who were like, ‘I’m sorry that he missed’. People actually said that about another human being. That’s the Democrat party. Are you kidding me? That’s not humanity. Who would think that?”Masemer praised the restraint of Trump supporters after the assassination attempt. “The best part of all that was the people in the Maga movement after that didn’t riot. We didn’t lash back at these people because we’re not haters. We just want our country back and that’s it.”Butler county, on the western edge of a coveted presidential swing state, is a rural-suburban community and a Trump stronghold. He won the county with about 66% of the vote in both 2016 and 2020. About 57% of Butler county’s 139,000 registered voters are Republicans, compared with about 29% who are Democrats and 14% other parties.Jana Anderson, 62, who works at an animal shelter, said: “I don’t think a woman should be president, only because it’s always been men. I’m a woman but I think men should lead the country, not a woman. Women, in my opinion, are wishy washy. I mean, she says a lot of things, she promises a lot of things, but I don’t know if she’s capable of doing those things.” More