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Comment by schmidtleonard | Hacker News Reader

    "When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all his many 
    subsidized projects, whether its electric cars that don't drive long enough, 
    driverless cars that crash, or rocket ships to nowhere, without which 
    subsidies he'd be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and 
    Republican, I could have said, 'drop to your knees and beg,' and he would 
    have done it..."

 -Trump, who Elon is currently giving $45 million / month for his campaign.

But hey, that's pocket change compared to the brand value he has incinerated on Twitter.

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Ouch! It is that age old problem. Massive wealth is unelected power, and they use the wealth to influence who we get to pick and what they do. Its not guranteed to happen but it is a sizable influence.

Hopefully his investment in Trump has as much RoI as his investment in Twitter. Regardless of which way the election goes.

unelected? hundreds of millions of people have given jeff bezos money

A solid half of those have the choice of either Bezos or the Waltons

That isn't a vote for Bezo's to have power over others. That is merely a vote for the goods/services being sold.

To most people, those two things are completely separate despite actually being two sides of the same coin.

https://youtu.be/Wm2_7j6xYDo?t=1356

Makes you wonder what we don’t know about the relationship.

I thought this was hyperbole, but nope. Literally posted by the guy.

Same here, it's on his Truth Social page:

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1086367432957...

This is Elon, who lies perpetually about everything. Absolutely no chance he ends up giving Trump $200 million.

Yep, he has a history of not following through with donations.

Elon is not giving Trump $45 million per month. Musk denied this in a recent interview with Peterson. He did say created a PAC though. [1]

I know it makes Musk an easy target and easier to attack when a report comes out saying he's donating $45m to Trump but seriously people need to stop believing blindly what the media says about anyone (and Musk especially) without fact-checking first. When I first saw the article about it in WSJ I was skeptical. There were 0 sources and it was sus.

"Oh WSJ said it so it must be true!"

WSJ's source: "according to people familiar with the matter." [2]

[1] https://time.com/6999003/elon-musk-donate-millions-trump-cam...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/elon-musk-has-said-he...

Ooh, Trump is going to be disappointed, he's been bragging about the $45M figure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxb-eXwcsEI

You believe everything Trump says? His staff told him that after reading business insider. They didn't even bother checking their actual accounts to see if Elon's super PAC donated $45M this month.

So you think he will take the news gracefully that he isn't getting $45M after all? LOL.

So wait, he created a PAC and donated $45 million dollars to the PAC and the pac is meant to support Trump right?

Where do you see he donated $45 million to it? Legit source please? Not WSJ "someone familiar with the matter"

Yes the PAC may support Trump but I don't think he's pumping 45 mil a month into it. WSJ put that article about it without any sources and Musk denied it.

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