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    La victoria de Trump es un triunfo para Elon Musk y la política de los grandes capitales

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    Es difícil separar el trabajo de campaña de Musk de otras influencias que llevaron a Trump a la Casa Blanca. Su papel podría inspirar iniciativas similares y contribuir a transformar las campañas modernas.En la estridente reunión de la noche electoral del martes, Elon Musk se sentó a dos asientos de Donald Trump, dispuesto a atribuirse mucho del mérito de su decisiva victoria presidencial.“Mi comité independiente de campaña, America PAC, mejoró enormemente la campaña republicana en el terreno en los estados disputados”, dijo Musk al comentarista conservador Tucker Carlson en una entrevista en Mar-a-Lago, la residencia y club privado de Trump en Florida. Publicó un meme desí mismo en el Despacho Oval para sus 203 millones de seguidores en X, su plataforma de redes sociales.Su vuelta de celebración fue el punto culminante de un esfuerzo que comenzó hace solo seis meses y que dependía de una arriesgada apuesta: el nuevo comité independiente de campaña de Musk dirigió eficazmente la operación de captación de votos de Trump en los estados más disputados, y Trump confió una función crucial de la campaña a un neófito en política.Es difícil separar el trabajo de campaña de Musk de otras influencias que llevaron a Trump a la Casa Blanca. Pero no cabe duda de que la elección fue una victoria no solo para Musk, sino también para la política del gran capital: un donante ultra rico aprovechó el cambiante sistema de financiación de campañas de Estados Unidos para inclinar la balanza como nunca antes.Musk financió casi en solitario una campaña que costó más de 175 millones de dólares. Sus representantes tocaron cerca de 11 millones de puertas en los estados disputados desde agosto, incluidos 1,8 millones en Míchigan y 2,3 millones en Pensilvania, según personas con conocimiento del asunto. Se gastaron otros 30 millones de dólares en un gran programa de correo directo y unos 22 millones en publicidad digital, incluso en medios afines a Trump como Barstool Sports.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      On the Trail, Vance Is Dogged by Questions About Trump’s Loss in 2020

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      Senator JD Vance of Ohio, who has faced renewed questions about the 2020 election since refusing at the vice-presidential debate this month to acknowledge that former President Donald J. Trump lost, falsely suggested on Saturday that the election had been “rigged.”“I think the election of 2020 had serious problems,” Mr. Vance said at a campaign event in Johnstown, Pa. “You want to call it rigged. Call it whatever you want to, it wasn’t OK.”Mr. Vance was asked five times in an interview with The New York Times this week whether Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election, and he declined to answer each time. Taking questions from reporters at a rally at a factory for military vehicles in Johnstown, Mr. Vance again refused to acknowledge his running mate’s defeat and downplayed the severity of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol even as he condemned it.“Yes, there was a riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but there was still a peaceful transfer of power in this country,” Mr. Vance said, describing the rioters as “a few knuckleheads who went off and did something they shouldn’t do.” The rioters, hundreds of whom were convicted of crimes in connection to the attack, had interrupted the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory as they stormed the Capitol that day.Johnstown, which has a storied history in the Pennsylvania steel industry, is in an overwhelmingly Republican county east of Pittsburgh that Mr. Trump won by 38 points in 2020. Some members of the audience at the event, filling roughly half the seats in the venue, stood up in their chairs and booed reporters as they asked questions about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 riot.Mr. Vance repeated his assertion that censorship by tech companies had hurt Mr. Trump in 2020. And he chided the press for asking him about that election, saying that he had not been asked one question about inflation or the economy.“I’m a hell of a lot more worried that American citizens can’t afford a good life in their country,” Vance said, “because Kamala Harris has been the vice president, and that is what I’m trying to change.” The audience of Trump supporters gave Mr. Vance a standing ovation, and broke out into chants of: “JD.”Later, after Mr. Vance departed Johnstown for a town-hall event in a packed airport hangar in Reading, Pa., Mr. Vance said that the attorney general would be the most important job in a second Trump administration. He vowed to “clean house” at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, and to fire those people who were responsible for Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, which he characterized as “fake.”“Here’s what President Trump and I are going to do when we get in there: We’re going to fire the people responsible,” Mr. Vance said to raucous applause. More

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      Elon Musk Leaps to Trump’s Side in Rally Appearance

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      Elon Musk, the billionaire head of Tesla and SpaceX, strode onto the stage to cheers at Donald J. Trump’s rally on Saturday night, lifted his arms above his head and jumped into the air — twice — exposing his navel as his shirt rode up.Wearing an “Occupy Mars” shirt underneath a sport coat, he nodded to his black “Make America Great Again” baseball cap.“As you can see, I’m not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA,” he said.Mr. Musk publicly endorsed Mr. Trump in the minutes after a gunman tried to kill the former president on July 13 in Butler, Pa., in a post on X, the social media platform he owns. So when Mr. Trump returned Saturday to hold a rally at the same venue where he was attacked, he brought Mr. Musk along.In addition to bouncing up and down onstage, he urged the crowd to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” — an echo of the words Mr. Trump had uttered after the attack.The crowd seemed to know Mr. Musk, who drew cheers as he was introduced by the former president. Mr. Trump lavished praise on Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, for building an American car company and saving “free speech” with X.”President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution,” Mr. Musk said, after bounding to the mic with his hands in the air. “He must win to preserve democracy in America.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Meta Distanced Itself From Politics

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      In January 2021, after pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new priority for Meta: He wanted to reduce the amount of political content on the company’s apps, including Facebook and Instagram.As the United States hurtles toward November’s election, Mr. Zuckerberg’s plan appears to be working.On Facebook, Instagram and Threads, political content is less heavily featured. App settings have been automatically set to de-emphasize the posts that users see about campaigns and candidates. And political misinformation is harder to find on the platforms after Meta removed transparency tools that journalists and researchers used to monitor the sites.Inside Meta, Mr. Zuckerberg, 40, no longer meets weekly with the heads of election security as he once did, according to four employees. He has reduced the number of full-time employees working on the issue and disbanded the election integrity team, these employees said, though the company says the election integrity workers were integrated into other teams. He has also decided not to have a “war room,” which Meta previously used to prepare for elections.Last month, Mr. Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee laying out how he wanted to distance himself and his company from politics. The goal, he said, was to be “neutral” and to not “even appear to be playing a role.”“It’s quite the pendulum swing because a decade ago, everyone at Facebook was desperate to be the face of elections,” said Katie Harbath, chief executive of Anchor Change, a tech consulting firm, who previously worked at Facebook. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elon Musk Hails Italian Leader Giorgia Meloni at Awards Ceremony

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      Mr. Musk described Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as “authentic, honest and thoughtful.” She used her Atlantic Council spotlight to defend Western values.Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, and Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy, were the stars of a black-tie dinner in New York on Monday that highlighted Mr. Musk’s increasing involvement in politics.Ms. Meloni had chosen Mr. Musk to introduce her as she received a Global Citizen Award from the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank that cited “her political and economic leadership of Italy, in the European Union” and of the Group of 7 nations “as well as her support of Ukraine in Russia’s war against it.”The prime minister and the billionaire business leader have bonded over the years. They share concerns about artificial intelligence and declining birthrates in Western countries, which Mr. Musk has called an existential threat to civilization.He described Ms. Meloni on Monday as “someone who is even more beautiful inside than outside” and “authentic, honest and thoughtful.”“That can’t always be said about politicians,” Mr. Musk added, to laughter from the crowd of 700 at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Manhattan.After thanking Mr. Musk for his “precious genius,” Ms. Meloni delivered a passionate defense of Western values. While rejecting authoritarian nationalism, she said, “we should not be afraid to defend words like ‘nation’ and ‘patriotism.’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elon Musk’s X Backs Down in Brazil

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      In an abrupt reversal, the social network’s lawyers said it was complying with court orders that it had previously defied. Brazil’s Supreme Court could allow the site to return next week.Elon Musk suddenly gave up.After defying court orders in Brazil for three weeks, Mr. Musk’s social network, X, has capitulated. In a court filing on Friday night, the company’s lawyers said that X had complied with orders from Brazil’s Supreme Court in the hopes that the court would lift a block on its site.The decision was a surprise move by Mr. Musk, who owns and controls X, after he said he had refused to obey what he called illegal orders to censor voices on his social network. Mr. Musk had dismissed local employees and refused to pay fines. The court responded by blocking X across Brazil last month.Now, X’s lawyers said the company had done exactly what Mr. Musk vowed not to: take down accounts that a Brazilian justice ordered removed because the judge said they threatened Brazil’s democracy. X also complied with the justice’s other demands, including paying fines and naming a new formal representative in the country, the lawyers said.Brazil’s Supreme Court confirmed X’s moves in a filing on Saturday, but said the company had not filed the proper paperwork. It gave X five days to send further documentation.The abrupt about-face from Mr. Musk in Brazil appeared to be a defeat for the outspoken businessman and his self-designed image as a warrior for free speech. Mr. Musk and his company had loudly and harshly criticized Brazil’s Supreme Court for months, even publicly releasing some of its sealed orders, but neither had publicly mentioned their reversal by Saturday morning.The moment showed how, in the yearslong power struggle between tech giants and nation-states, governments have been able to keep the upper hand.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 200 Shares169 Views

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      Elon Musk Deletes His Post Asking Why No One Has Tried to Assassinate Biden or Harris

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      Hours after what the F.B.I. called a second attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump, Elon Musk wrote on his social media site — and then deleted — a post suggesting it was odd that nobody had tried to kill President Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.Mr. Musk said the post on X had been intended as a joke.In response to a user who asked, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?” Mr. Musk, who has endorsed the former president and comments frequently on the U.S. presidential campaign, wrote: “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.” His post, which was captured by X users, included a thinking-face emoji.Mr. Musk took down the post after it immediately drew outrage. X says he has more than 197 million followers on the platform, which he bought in 2022.“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 said in a follow-up post early Monday. “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text,” he wrote in another.The Secret Service said on Sunday that it had fired on an armed man at Mr. Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla., while the former president was playing. A suspect was later arrested. The incident followed one in July in which Mr. Trump was shot in the ear by a would-be assassin while he was holding a rally in Pennsylvania. The shooter was killed by law enforcement officers.Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, has established a reputation as an edgy plutocrat not bound by social conventions when it comes to expressing his opinions and broadcasting what is on his mind to his followers. His power and wealth have made him relatively impervious to criticism, and his bluntness has made him a hero to many on the right who oppose what they call political correctness.Several of his recent posts about the election have drawn criticism. Last week, he amplified the bogus right-wing claims that immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. And after the music superstar Taylor Swift said last week that she would vote for Ms. Harris, signing her endorsement “Childless Cat Lady” in a reference to comments by Mr. Trump’s running mate, Mr. Musk appeared to offer jokingly to impregnate Ms. Swift, writing: “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.” More

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      Who Is Laura Loomer, the Far-Right Activist Who Traveled With Trump?

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      After fellow Republicans criticized her appearance on the trail, noting her history of offensive remarks, former President Donald J. Trump praised her but later said he disagreed with some of her statements.Five years ago Laura Loomer, a far-right activist with a history of expressing bigoted views and a knack for generating publicity, filed an application for a trademark to protect her work in “the field of political activism.”Ms. Loomer, 31, part of a generation of web-savvy right-wing influencers, decided to trademark the term she had coined for her signature move of ambushing people with unexpected, often embarrassing questions. She called it getting “Loomered.”Already a well-known figure among internet obsessives thanks to her anti-Muslim activism, undercover sting operations and web-savvy political stunts, Ms. Loomer found herself at the center of the presidential campaign this week when she traveled with former President Donald J. Trump. She went with him to Philadelphia for the presidential debate, and then accompanied him to Sept. 11 memorial events in New York City and Shanksville, Pa., which drew pointed criticism from Democrats and Republicans because she had previously called Sept. 11 “an inside job.”Here’s more about Laura Loomer.Why are politicians from both parties criticizing her?Ms. Loomer has made a number of racist, sexist, homophobic and Islamophobic comments in the past. She has described Islam as a “cancer,” used the hashtag “#proudislamophobe” and once seemed to celebrate the deaths of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. In 2018, after Twitter banned her for frequent anti-Muslim content, she handcuffed herself to the company’s headquarters in New York and wore a yellow Star of David similar to those Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust (Ms. Loomer is Jewish).After the billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter, her account was reinstated, and she has since built up a following of more than 1.2 million people on the site (which Mr. Musk later renamed X) and has a web show. She often blasts out content praising Mr. Trump and viciously attacking anyone she might perceive as a rival.Two days before she traveled with Mr. Trump to the debate, she wrote in a post on X that if Vice President Kamala Harris, whose mother was Indian American, won the election, the White House would “smell like curry.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Brazil Threatens to Ban Elon Musk’s X

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      The country’s Supreme Court gave the service 24 hours to name a legal representative in Brazil or face suspension.Brazil’s Supreme Court on Wednesday gave Elon Musk 24 hours to name a legal representative for X in Brazil or face a ban of his social network across the nation of 200 million.Mr. Musk closed X’s office in Brazil last week in protest of orders from a Brazilian Supreme Court justice to suspend certain accounts. If X refuses to comply, it could lose access to one of its largest markets outside the United States — a blow as the company struggles to regain revenue after Mr. Musk battled with advertisers and told them not to spend on the platform.The court posted its order on X on Wednesday night, suggesting that Mr. Musk had until about 8 p.m. local time Thursday to respond.The moment is one of the biggest tests yet for Mr. Musk’s efforts to mold X to his personal ideology, and how he responds will shed light on how far he is willing to take his stated commitment to protecting his social network from what he calls censorship.X and Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the possible ban.Mr. Musk has been enmeshed in a monthslong feud with Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice whom he has accused of censoring conservative voices online. Justice Moraes has ordered the suspension of more than 100 X accounts in what he says is a battle against misinformation, hate speech and attacks on democracy.Most of the accounts that Justice Moraes has targeted belong to right-wing supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president. Some of them questioned Mr. Bolsonaro’s 2022 election loss and sympathized with protesters who raided Brazil’s halls of power, hoping to invoke a military takeover.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More