Audio Excerpt - [Crowd cheering]

RUBY:

At a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, Elon Musk takes the stage.

Audio Excerpt - Crowd:

“Elon! Elon! Elon!”

DANA:

And he announces that he will start giving out $1 million a day to randomly chosen people that sign a petition that he has online.

Audio Excerpt - Elon Musk:

“So I have a surprise for you, which is that we are going to be awarding a million dollars to randomly to people who have signed, to sign the petition every day. From now until the election.”

RUBY:

Joining Musk is a blonde woman in a red Trump Vance t-shirt, he hugs her and an assistant hands her a giant novelty check.

Audio Excerpt - Elon Musk:

“So congratulations”

Audio Excerpt - Recipient:

“Thank you so much. Oh my God.”

Audio Excerpt - Elon Musk:

“Is there anything you want to say?”

Audio Excerpt - Recipient:

“Thank you so much. I mean I truly believe everything you’re doing, truly you don’t need to be doing and I know a lot of us feel the same way.”

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DANA:

I've never seen anything like this. I'm not a political reporter. Typically, I'm a tech reporter. But what he's doing is super unconventional.

RUBY:

It’s not just unconventional, what Elon Musk is doing could also be illegal.

But for Musk, these million dollar checks aren’t even the tip of the iceberg.

Investigative journalist Dana Mattioli has uncovered years of secret donations by Musk that upend the idea that he’s a recent entrant into Trump’s orbit.

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Today on the show Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli on Musk, his millions and how big tech is reshaping politics in America.

It’s Monday, October 28.

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RUBY:

So Dana, Elon Musk recently made this big announcement, he’ll be giving away a million dollars a day until the election. So what are his conditions to win?

DANA:

Yeah. So the conditions are, anyone eligible needs to live in a swing state, be registered to vote, and they need to pledge to uphold these two amendments, you know, freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. The right to bear arms in particular, is something very much that Republicans are catalysed around. And, you know, it's generated a ton of media buzz, you know, in addition to this being a way to get people to potentially register to vote if they haven't registered to vote and generate excitement around the campaign.

It's also kind of invaluable free press for him. That would cost way more than $1 million a day for the Trump campaign. If you think about it at a time, that's a really critical point in the election. People are now voting. Early voting is open. So this generated a lot of press for both Elon Musk, but Donald Trump as well.

RUBY:

Absolutely. And that's because it is. I mean, this is something new, offering a cash prize in this way. Were you surprised when you heard about it?

DANA:

Super surprised.

So there were a few iterations of this. A few weeks ago, he announced this petition and he was offering $47 for anyone who had signed it and referred friends.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“A political petition with financial incentive. Elon Musk is asking his followers on X to sign a petition to support the Constitution. A petition started by America's Super PAC, a pro-Trump group founded by Elon Musk. Musk added, earn $47 for every person you refer to sign the petition, if they are in the swing states.”

DANA:

And then this was the next iteration was this million dollar drawing, everyday random drawing. And it's really unconventional to the point where some people think it could be illegal, it could get into grey areas as it relates to campaign finance laws.

RUBY:

Okay. Well, let's talk about that. How might this breach campaign finance laws?

DANA:

Well, we were able to report that the Department of Justice sent a letter to Musk's Super PAC saying that giving these cash payments to registered voters who signed the petition might violate federal law. And the big thing here is that there are laws in the U.S. that prevent anyone from knowingly paying people to register to vote in an election or paying people to vote in an election. And, you know, one of the conditions to possibly winning this lottery is registering to vote. So, you know, he's been put on warning from the Department of Justice and we'll see where that goes.

RUBY:

And so, Dana, what do you think the likelihood is of the Justice Department attempting to take action against Musk here?

DANA:

You know, it's really difficult to say where they'll net out on this. We had a statement from the PAC about this. They said the PAC is confident in the legality of this initiative. And the predictable media meltdown is only helping America PAC's effort to support Donald Trump. So they're obviously pleased with all of the media that they're asserting that this is legal.

You know, and then, you know, even if, let's say the Department of Justice is cracked and this is illegal, you know, I'm sure there'll be allegations that this is what a lot of people on the right call lawfare, the theory that the Democrats are using federal agencies to attack Republicans that speak out against them or do things that they don't like.

RUBY:

And Dana, we've spoken before about Musk's support for Trump, about his large donations Super PAC. He's been showing up at Trump rallies a lot lately. But can we talk a bit more about what is motivating Musk at this point? What would change for him under a Trump presidency?

DANA:

I mean, one thing that he and Donald Trump have spoken about is some sort of advisory role.

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reform. And Elon, because he's not very busy, has agreed to head that task force.”

DANA:

And over the summer, Musk hosted Donald Trump on his media platform X for a town hall. And the idea for this role and in the administration being the head of government efficiency came up. And that seems to be something that Elon's really grasped onto.

He thinks that there's, you know, a lot of inefficiency in government, that there's too much waste, there's too much floating. It's really slow. There's a lot of red tape. So that seems to be an area that he's really focussed on. But we also know that part of this is irrespective of his companies. He's concerned about things like illegal immigration. He's concerned about things like crime.

Audio Excerpt - Elon Musk:

“I think if Trump loses, we're going to see, you know, our cities are going to get less safe, borders obviously going to be wide open. We're going to see government spending go ballistic. It's inflation going nuts.”

DANA:

He doesn't like what he considers a Democratic agenda to provide gender affirming care for minors or, you know, policies around diversity, equity and inclusion. So it goes beyond his business interests as well.

RUBY:

Coming up after the break - how dark money is shaping the race.

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RUBY:

Dana, In order to win this cash prize, a person would need to live in one of the swing states. So we're talking about Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada. So can you tell me just how close the the race is in some of these states?

DANA:

I mean, some of these states are extremely close. And depending on the polls, it's it's changing by the day. In some of those states, it could come down to certain districts that decide for the state. Right. So it is an all out fight right now between the Republicans and Democrats to find these voters and and get them to commit to either voting now, voting by mail or figuring out a plan to get them to the polls, because these are really razor thin margins.

RUBY:

With that in mind, then, can you tell me a bit more about what Trump's campaign has been doing in these swing states to try and get people to vote for him?

DANA:

Well, it's really fascinating. We reported that a while ago the head of the Republican National Convention spoke to Donald Trump and he told Trump that, you know, the RNC could do two things for you. We could help you with your ground game and we could help you with election integrity. And Trump directed the RNC not to worry about the ground game. He said, you know, my people will show up no matter what. Only focus on election integrity.

So the Trump campaign really did not have much of a focus on ground game efforts, and that's partially why Elon got involved here. Elon said that the super PAC with the idea of taking a lot of that on, he wants to you know, he had a stated goal of getting 800,000 people in those swing states that were low propensity voters to change their minds and go place a vote. Part of that is knocking on doors, having conversations, getting people registered and the like.

Now we're two weeks out. The proof will be in the pudding as to whether Trump wins or not. But, you know, this is all new for Elon. He's not typically a political operative. He hasn't run super PACs in the past.

Audio Excerpt - Elon Musk:

“It's not, I don't want to be in politics. I want to be clear. That is not my preference. I like I just like building stuff. I like building products that people love. I derive joy from seeing people enjoy the products that my companies make.”

DANA:

And, you know, they've had a lot of stumbles along the way. They've fired lots of different vendors that were doing this very work for them, you know, and had disruptions in their ground game efforts.

And we were able to find out is that because of some of these stumbles that the PAC had and continuity issues, at one point the PAC was paying these canvassers $30 per door, which is an astronomical fee. Typically for a campaign door knocking, you're paid between like $4 and $5 a door. So just to give you a sense of the scope here. So that was another one of these weird inconsistencies we found with the Super PAC.

RUBY:

Dana, you're a tech reporter, not traditionally a political reporter. So what does it tell you about the growing power and influence of big tech that you are now really reporting on the presidential election?

DANA:

Yeah, it's a really good point. If you would have asked me a year ago if I'd be so steeped in this presidential election, I would have laughed. You know, if you think about tech, these are some of the biggest market caps of companies in the world. They're some of the biggest employers in the U.S. And these are some celebrity CEOs where they're known and people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are household names. Right.

And this election cycle, what we've seen is they've become major mega-donors. We have Elon Musk giving at least $75 million this election cycle and more coming. We have people like Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, giving $50 million to Kamala Harris. Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, is also a Harris backer. And I mean, these are the ones that we know. There's so much money being funnelled by billionaires through dark money organisations going to help the candidates as well. That will never be revealed.

RUBY:

And why is that Dana? Because in Australia we might not know who is donating to politicians in real time but we are able to find out, eventually. But it seems that what ends up being revealed in the US, it really comes down to the work of people like you, building sources and relying on leaks to ultimately expose how dark money works.

DANA:

So what's fascinating is if you're a billionaire in the U.S. and you have, you know, the resources to have well-paid lawyers and advisers set up, you're able to spread your money and influence campaigns behind the scenes without anyone knowing. And for years, that's exactly what Elon Musk did.

Everyone thinks that Elon Musk became political this election. And what we were able to find at the Wall Street Journal through a lot of time spent investigating his dark money patterns is that his GOP and Republican donations started much earlier in 2022. For instance, we were able to find that Elon gave more than $50 million to an organisation run by Stephen Miller, and Stephen Miller was Donald Trump's anti-immigration tsar during his first campaign. And this money funded a series of really explosive advertisements in 2022, right before the midterm elections.

And no one really knew who was funding them. It was this mystery for a really long time until a few weeks ago, we reported that it was Elon Musk. We were also able to find through our sources that Elon Musk's first pick for president was not Donald Trump, who has thrown all of his weight behind and all of his money behind. He actually secretly gave Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida $10 million last year for his presidential election efforts.

So there's tons of dark money pools like that that these billionaires rely on to influence things behind the scenes.

RUBY:

Yeah. I mean, when you think about those sums of money, it is pretty extraordinary.

DANA:

It is.

RUBY:

Dana, thank you so much for your time today.

DANA:

Thank you for having me.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

The Liberal National Party has won Queensland’s state election.

Leader David Crisafulli's win ends a decade of Labor rule in the state.

The LNP ran on a cost of living and tough on crime agenda, promising that young people who commit serious crimes would be charged as adults.

Abortion was a late surprise issue in the contest and is thought to have tightened the gap between the two major parties.

And, Israel has struck back against Iran, launching attacks on missile manufacturing and launch sites across three provinces.

The US had counselled Israel not to strike oil or nuclear facilities, in a bid to prevent a retaliatory escalation from Iran.

The attacks by Israel were in response to Iran’s missile attacks on Israel earlier this month.

I'm Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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