Is Elon Musk Violating Federal Election Law?

Billionaire Elon Musk will host his first of several town halls Thursday at 4 p.m. in Folsom, Pennsylvania. The only people allowed to this event, put on by Musk’s America PAC, are registered voters in the state who have signed the PAC’s petition, “support the First and Second Amendments,” and have already voted in the election.

Musk says while he has three more “talks” scheduled on the calendar in Pennsylvania, he “will probably do half a dozen throughout the state” by Election Day. There’s just one problem: The events likely violate federal election law. As Popular Information reported on Thursday, “federal law prohibits making or offering to make ‘an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate.’” Musk’s requirement that attendees to his town halls be registered voters likely violates that provision.

This follows as Musk continues to increase his involvement in the Trump campaign, with his super PAC essentially running the Republican candidate’s flawed ground campaign with a poorly functioning app.

His America PAC is essentially entirely self-funded; according to new campaign finance data, Musk has poured $75 million into the fund since July. Prior to that report, the PAC only showed a measly $8 million from friends like Joe Lonsdale of Palantir and the Winklevoss twins.

Trump has hinted that this spending could earn Musk a spot in his Cabinet, mentioning the promise again to Latino voters at his Univision town hall on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Musk showcased his main-character syndrome, posting an embarrassing supercut of himself on the campaign trail at 1 a.m. on Thursday.

But Republicans worry that the billionaire might be blowing up Trump’s campaign as he has his randomly exploding Teslas. “We were upfront about our concerns,” an anonymous GOP operative close to Trump told Rolling Stone this week, speaking about the America PAC’s canvassing and voter turnout operation. At the moment, Musk’s PAC is also still hiring door knockers in swing states through X, begging the question from a Trump donor, “Why isn’t the army already in place?”

Fox News is desperately trying to spin Kamala Harris’s interview with Bret Baier Wednesday night and create the impression that the vice president bombed. 

The effort started right after the interview concluded, with Martha MacCallum telling Baier, “Bret, I thought you did a masterful job. This is the kind of interview that we should see a lot of on the campaign trail. 

“I thought you really asked the questions that a lot of Americans want answers to, which is, ‘How did you let all these millions of people come into the country, and do you have any regrets about it?’ and I think her answers were not good on that,” MacCallum said.

Sean Hannity covered for Baier on his evening show, saying, “He didn’t let Kamala off the hook; he pressed her, he pressed her repeatedly. Needless to say, I’d say the joy is gone in the Harris campaign tonight, and her obvious anger? That was on full display, the one she’s notorious for.” 

Baier went on Hannity’s show himself, and accused Harris of gamesmanship by coming out to begin the interview at 5:17 p.m. instead of earlier. He also accused the vice president of having a “mission” to find a viral moment.

“She came to Fox News and she wanted to have a ‘go after Donald Trump’ viral moment that plays on a lot of other channels and on social media, and I think she may have gotten that,” Baier said.  

Jesse Watters also took shots at Harris, saying, “She was roughed up so badly, Pelosi’s asking Joe to get back in,” saying that she had no good answers on immigration, praising Baier, and putting down her interviews with other news networks.

“This is what an actual Kamala Harris interview should look like. Bret gave her the same treatment as he gave Trump in the spring: respectful, firm, and persistent. We didn’t swap her answers to make her look better like CBS. We didn’t invite little Timmy along to hold her hand like CNN. This was a big girl interview. And she flopped,” Watters said.  

Fox News is the most important media organ for Republicans and conservatives, and it’s not surprising that its hosts would push the narrative that Harris messed up. In reality, though, Harris did not back down from the network’s bias, challenging Baier and fighting back against his interruptions, and outside observers, including former Fox employees, agreed. Watters’s contention that Fox treated Harris the same way as Trump is laughable, especially since the network made heavy edits to an interview with the former president in June and had aired a remarkably gentle and sanitized town hall with him earlier that day.

The network was always going to be a formidable opponent for the Democrats this election, and Wednesday’s interview is clear proof that Fox’s on-air personalities want to make Harris look bad and help their preferred candidate, Donald Trump. The question is whether their audience was convinced. 

Appealing to undecided Latino voters with bold-faced racism at a Univision town hall was a brazen strategy for Donald Trump. Surprisingly, it didn’t seem to pay off.

The Republican presidential nominee’s favorability among Latino voters has been in flux, but a New York Times/Siena College poll published earlier this week found that Vice President Kamala Harris led the nationwide demographic by a 12-point margin, while Trump attracted just 40 percent of the coveted vote. But groups of Latinos in key swing states, such as Nevada, have become less shy in recent months about showing their support for the former president, particularly over the economy.

So when it came time to answer a question from Jorge Velazquez, a 64-year-old Mexican immigrant farmer, about his mass deportation plan and the thousands of arduous jobs it would leave empty in the agricultural industry, Trump had an opening to seal the deal. Instead, he dropped the bag.

“The problem we have is, we had people coming in under my administration, and they were coming in legally, they were coming in through a system we had which was great because I’m the best thing that ever happened to farmers, you know that. I was great,” Trump said.

“They’ve released hundreds of thousands of people that are murderers, drug dealers, terrorists—they’re coming in totally, nobody knows who they are, where they come from,” Trump continued as audience members shifted in their seats.

“The other thing I can say is that a lot of the jobs that you have and that other people have are being taken by these people that are coming in,” Trump continued, misunderstanding Velazquez’s question, which directly tasked Trump to answer how much America would pay for the “price of food” if immigrant labor was unavailable.

“The African American population and the Hispanic population in particular are losing jobs now because millions of people are coming in,” Trump said. “So, they’re coming in but they’re also coming in largely and tremendous numbers, coming in, out of mental institutions—they’re emptying out mental institutions—they’re emptying out insane asylums, that’s a step above a mental institution.… They’re emptying out jails.”

In another sprawling and disturbing answer, Trump reinforced the baseless MAGA conspiracy that Haitian immigrants (who have legal temporary protected status) were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, lamenting that the sudden influx was preventing locals from accessing their basic needs.

“If you were a person that lived there, if you lived in Springfield, Ohio, and all of a sudden you couldn’t get into a hospital, you couldn’t get your children into a school, you wouldn’t be able to buy groceries. You could no longer pay the rent because the government’s paying rent, any of that. If any of that happened, it would be a disaster for you and you wouldn’t be happy. We want to make our people safe and secure, and we want to make them happy,” Trump said.

But the Haitian immigrants—who were attracted to the city due to its low cost of living and readily available work opportunities—are hardly why so many schools and government buildings in Springfield have shut down in recent weeks.

Instead, that fault lies with Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, who have drawn so much attention to the tiny city with their conspiracy that Springfield has endured at least 33 bomb threats, forcing it to evacuate and temporarily shutter several of its schools, colleges, festivals, and a significant portion of its government facilities.

Multiple city officials, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, and even JD Vance himself have stated in no uncertain terms that the Haitian immigrant conspiracy is false.

No, it’s not 2016: Donald Trump is once again trying to pay to keep Stormy Daniels quiet ahead of the presidential election.

Just 11 days before the 2016 election, Trump had organized for Daniels to be paid $130,000 so that she would not speak publicly about their extramarital affair, illegally concealing the payment by laundering the money through Michael Cohen, his former attorney.

As a result, Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in May, and awaits sentencing later in November. Apparently, Trump hasn’t learned from his mistakes at all. As MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported Wednesday night, Trump tried yet again to pay for Daniels’s silence.

Following Trump’s conviction, Daniels still had to pay some legal fees to his team related to some of their other disputes. While negotiating the fees and interest, Trump’s lawyer demanded $652,000 from Daniels, who was aiming for a number closer to $600,000.

When Daniels’s lawyer Clark Brewster called her to tell her what number they’d agreed on, Daniels was shocked to find that Trump’s team was trying their same, failed gambit as last time.

“They want to cut some kind of deal where they silence you,” Brewester said, in a video of the call Daniels had released to MSNBC.

“Don’t they know that shit won’t work?” Daniels scoffed.

“It’s not gonna happen, it’s not gonna happen,” Brewster replied.

Maddow was incredulous as she explained the situation. “Trump is trying to get another hush-money deal with Stormy Daniels ahead of this election,” she said. “Trump’s lawyer basically offered to take it off the bottom line; they would pretend that Stormy Daniels owed less money to Trump than they actually believed she owed, if she also signed an agreement not to talk about Trump.”

Maddow said that she had also received emails between Brewster and Trump’s lawyer Harry J. Ross, which confirmed Trump’s offer in exchange for Daniels’s silence.

“We disagree that a payment of 620,000.00 would be in full satisfaction of the three judgments,” read the offer from Ross. “However, we can agree to settle these matters for $620,000.00 provided that your client agrees in writing to make no public or private statements related to any alleged past interactions with President Trump, or defamatory or disparaging statements about him, his businesses and/or any affiliates or his suitability as a candidate for President.”

When Brewster refused Ross’s terms, he received another message, which dropped the bid for Daniels’s complicity. “I just spoke to my client and co-counsel,” the email read. “Case can be settled for 635,000.00 ALL IN.”

Daniels ended up paying $627,500 in fees to Trump, and did not agree to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

While Ross did not respond to MSNBC’s questions, the Trump campaign released a statement that … also did not answer any questions. “These purported documents were attained as part of an illegal, foreign hacking against President Trump and his team,” said Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung.

Of course, this is a lie, as Brewster had provided the emails to MSNBC.

Donald Trump’s latest play to attract undecided Latino votes did not go as planned.

Speaking at a Univision town hall on Wednesday, Trump was confronted with serious questions by Republicans and former Republicans who had not yet decided if they would support him in a few weeks.

But one question from Ramiro González, a 56-year-old construction worker from Tampa who had de-registered from the Republican Party, really seemed to throw him.

“I want to give you the opportunity to try and win back my vote,” González said. “Your action and maybe inaction, during your presidency and maybe the last few years, sort of, was a little disturbing to me.… What happened during January 6, and the fact that you know, you waited so long to take action while your supporters were attacking the Capital.”

Trump then launched into his usual diatribe about the events of the day, peeling himself away from the fact that thousands of his supporters had traveled to Washington that day to hear him speak before they were incited to storm the Capitol.

“You had hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington. They didn’t come because of me, they came because of the election—they thought the election was a rigged election, and that’s why they came,” Trump said. “Some of those people went down to the Capitol. I said ‘peacefully and patriotically,’ nothing done wrong at all, nothing done wrong.”

But that’s when Trump completely stopped making sense.

“Action was taken, strong action,” Trump said. “Ashley Babbitt was killed. Nobody was killed.

“There were no guns down there, we didn’t have guns, the others had guns,” Trump said, apparently complaining that the Capitol Police were armed before quickly attempting to correct that he had simultaneously referred to himself and his rioting supporters as a collective unit.

The entire interaction didn’t go over well with other audience members, who were seen twisting their faces with concern and disgust while the former president drew out his response. And a later comment, in which Trump referred to January 6 as a “day of love,” pushed González to furrow his brow.

The Univision town hall was nothing like the Fox News one Trump participated in the day before, which featured softball questions from a small crowd of women who turned out to be Trump supporters—and whom the network had seemingly invited to offer a safe space for the Republican presidential nominee. Behind the scenes, some women openly admitted that they had received “personal invitations” from the network to appear.

Fox News’s Brett Baier went on the offensive during an interview with Kamala Harris Wednesday night, but even he had to admit she got the best of him.

In a segment reacting to his own contentious interview, Baier conceded that Harris may have gotten exactly what she wanted from that interview.

“I think she had a … a mission, that she wanted to do. And maybe, she wanted to have a viral moment, she wanted to have a pushback,” Baier said. “She came to Fox News and she wanted to have a ‘go after Donald Trump’ viral moment that plays on other channels, and on social media. And I think she may have gotten that.”

During the interview, Baier pushed Harris to respond to several copy-pastes of Trump’s talking points, asking her about gender-affirming care in prisons and if she’d apologize to the family of a child killed by an immigrant. When she responded, Baier interrupted Harris’s answers and, appearing frustrated, formatted his follow-ups like debate rebuttals. Baier later offered a thin defense for his bad form in the interview, saying that he thought Harris would be “tough to redirect without me trying to interrupt,” and complaining that he hadn’t gotten the full time with Harris he’d expected.

At one point Harris even called out Baier for playing a truncated clip of Trump brushing off his “enemy from within” remark, instead of the actual clip itself from earlier this week—perhaps the “viral moment” Baier had referred to.

“You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they don’t agree with him. This is a democracy!” Harris said.

While some on air at Fox News, such as Martha MacCallum and Dana Perino, complimented Baier’s performance and criticized Harris’s, it seems that not everyone thought that Baier did a great job—even former Fox News employees.

One former Fox producer sent an anonymous statement to Zeteo’s Justin Baragona, who posted it on X.

“Baier showed, again, he’s not a ‘straight news’ anchor. He’s a hack who’s no different than Hannity or Watters. He bowed to the pressure from his MAGA fans because he doesn’t care as long as they don’t change the channel,” the ex-producer said.

Baragona posted another statement from another former producer for Fox News. The second ex-producer said that it was “interesting to see Bret Baier for who he really is now that I’m on the outside looking in.” They added that Baier is “just so completely in the tank it’s hard to believe anyone sees him as a real journalist.”

Other journalists weren’t too pleased, either.

“I’d like to congratulate Kamala Harris on her victory in the Presidential Debate against Bret Baier despite Baier’s compulsive interruptions,” wrote Keith Olbermann in a post on X.

Writer Peter Wehner also gave his two cents in a post on X. “My take: Bret Baier has rarely looked as bad (or tendentious) as he did in his interview with Kamala Harris,” Wehner wrote. “On the flip side, this was one of her best interviews. She dominated Bret. All in all it was quite a bad day for MAGA world’s most important media outlet.”

For his faultless regurgitation of Trump’s talking points, Baier did earn the approval of the former president, at least.

“Great job by Bret Baier in his Interview with Lyin’ Kamala Harris,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social before ranting about Trump Derangement Syndrome. “Again, congratulations to Bret Baier on a tough but very fair interview, one that clearly showed how totally incompetent Kamala is. For the good of our Nation, her inferior Cognitive ability must be tested at once!”

Surprise, surprise: Donald Trump has been lying about how he supposedly saved American jobs by threatening John Deere with tariffs.

In Trump’s telling, the farm equipment manufacturer had planned to outsource some of its production to Mexico but abandoned the plan when Trump threatened to hit the company with tariffs.

“John Deere … announced about a year ago they’re gonna build big plants outside of the United States. Right? They’re going to build them in Mexico,” Trump told the Economic Club of Chicago Tuesday. “I said, ‘If John Deere builds those plants, they’re not selling anything into the United States.’ They just announced yesterday they’re probably not going to build the plants, OK? I kept the jobs here.”

But the company had made no such announcement, CNN reported Wednesday, finding nothing in any media reports or John Deere’s corporate releases. A spokesperson for the company confirmed to The Wall Street Journal Tuesday that they hadn’t made any such announcements or changed their plans to shift some of their production. 

CNN reached out to the Trump campaign to ask for evidence or comment on the Journal’s report but did not receive a response. The former president is known for making false claims on days ending in -y, but according to polls, the economy is a topic where voters trust him more than Kamala Harris.

Trump did not help his economic credentials in Chicago Tuesday, with the event’s moderator, Bloomberg News editor in chief John Micklethwait pointing out that his promises, including tariffs, would wreck the economy. He also lashed out at Micklethwait for fact-checking his outrageous claims during their interview and wasn’t able to stay on topic for many of the questions he was asked. Trump’s many made-up claims and anecdotes during the Tuesday interview seem to indicate that his ongoing cognitive decline is worsening as the election nears.

During a Fox News town hall that aired Wednesday, Donald Trump revealed that transgender people will be one of his first set of victims—appearing to suggest a sweeping executive order.

At the town hall dedicated to “women’s issues,” Trump was asked about what he would do as president to tackle the “transgender issue” in women’s sports. Trump responded by first saying something true: “It’s such an easy question” for him to answer.

“We’re not going to let it happen,” he said.

Trump then went on to discuss one California transgender NCAA volleyball player who has been the target of the right for the past month. “I never saw a ball hit so hard,” said Trump, referring to a viral video of the athlete. Under his watch, transgender athletes competing in sports that match their gender will “absolutely stop,” he added.

When Fox’s Harris Faulkner asked a slightly more difficult question, how Trump would actually logistically stop the issue, Trump replied, “You just ban it. The president bans it. You just don’t let it happen.”

The question of transgender people competing in athletics is an easy culture-war question for the right. It doesn’t address any real hardship for women or issues that impact everyday Americans’ lives. Despite half of states placing some kind of ban on transgender athletes, experts estimate there are probably fewer than 100 transgender women competing in NCAA sports. This type of question that allows Trump to pontificate about gender is exactly the kind of easy question he adores.

Meanwhile on the other side of the aisle, Kamala Harris’s team also felt comfortable using transgender people as a political pawn. In a post on X Wednesday, KamalaHQ faced blowback after trying to drag Trump for offering gender-affirming care to migrants and incarcerated people during his presidency.

Elon Musk is playing Jewish and Arab American voters against each other.

The tech billionaire is funding a super PAC, Future Coalition PAC, that is running digital ads that tout Kamala Harris’s support for Israel in Michigan, in areas heavily populated with Muslim and Arab voters. At the same time, the super PAC is running ads aimed at Jewish voters in Pennsylvania attacking Harris as promoting anti-Israel policies, HuffPost reports.

One of the ads in Michigan touts Harris and the Jewish identity of her husband, Doug Emhoff, calling them “America’s pro-Israel power couple,” and mentions Israel’s “noble fight against the terrorists in Gaza.” A mailer paid for by the group also states that Harris leans on her “Jewish husband” to craft her policies on Israel. The ads’s focus on Emhoff to bolster a pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian message has been called antisemitic by Jewish Democrats.

Meanwhile, the super PAC’s ads in Pennsylvania send the opposite message, asking, for example, “Why did Kamala Harris support denying Israel the weapons needed to defeat the Hamas terrorists who massacred thousands? And why did Harris show sympathy for college protesters who are rabidly antisemitic?”

The aim of the two ads is to try to use the crisis in Gaza  to undermine Harris’s support from two major communities in key battleground states.

The New York Times confirmed Tuesday, shortly before FEC filings became public, that Building America’s Future is the dark money group behind the PAC. And The Wall Street Journal had already reported that Musk is one of the group’s major contributors. The tech CEO has pushed antisemitic conspiracy theories on his social media platform, X, and curried favor with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deflect criticism.

The super PAC’s ads may prove to be effective with many Muslim and Arab American voters frustrated with President Biden and Harris’s stance over Israel’s brutal war in the Middle East, which has killed 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza and has expanded to include Lebanon. The Democratic National Convention snubbed opponents of Israel’s actions and refused to feature any Palestinian speakers. The Harris campaign has also refused to signal any change in U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine. 

For weeks, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has skirted and dodged answering whether he believes that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. But on Wednesday, Vance offered his most eyebrow-raising take thus far: “Not by the words that I would use.”

Speaking before a crowd in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the MAGA movement’s second-in-command insisted that he had already answered the question when it was posed to him in dozens of previous interviews. In a word-salad reply, Vance refused to yield to the idea that Trump had not secured the presidency in 2020—but he also suggested that Trump may not have lost at all.

“I think there were serious problems in 2020. So did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use,” Vance said.

Vance isn’t the only MAGA ally still holding out on the 2020 election results in the waning days of the 2024 race. Speaking with NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson couldn’t help but qualify his answer as to whether he would certify the results of the upcoming election no matter the outcome.

“Regardless of who wins, you’ll certify the results?” asked host Kristen Welker.

“Regardless? Of course, yes, if the election is free and fair and legal, and we pray and hope that it is, there’s a lot of work being done to make sure that’s true,” Johnson said. “I think this one’s going to be so large there’ll be no question. I think Donald J. Trump is your next president, and that can’t happen soon enough.”

When Welker pointed out that saying “if” the election is fair, as well as Trump’s continued lack of a concession over the 2020 vote, was likely to undermine voter confidence in the upcoming election, Johnson was quick to brush off her concerns.

“The point is the process works. We have the peaceful transfer of power. We did in 2020,” he said, conveniently ignoring the fact that an armed and violent mob stormed the Capitol to try to prevent that transfer of power.

Loyalty, after all, has a premium in any future Trump administration.