It’s hard to understand how Elon Musk can be the CEO of two companies when he seems to spend all his time on X (formerly Twitter) boosting right-wing lies and acting out because his transgender daughter wants nothing to do with him. In the past day, Musk posted about migrants allegedly causing violence (twice), about how Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas deserves to be impeached (twice), about how the border bill is unnecessary (three times), and about how there is a conspiracy to turn kids trans (three times).
He also posted a video claiming that using TikTok leads to the deaths of children … after it first convinces them to be trans. In between all this and a day of attacking the border security bill, Musk did slip in a tweet promoting his Starlink satellite internet service. So he’ll probably ask for a raise.
All this stuff has been left up, no matter how mean-spirited and simply wrong it is. But there is one Musk tweet that goes extra hard at supporting MAGA and Donald Trump—the one where he endorses every false claim about voting fraud.
Musk’s claim that there’s a pipeline allowing illegal immigrants to vote without ever having to get their IDs checked is wrong at every point.
Driver’s licenses and other IDs don’t allow noncitizens to vote in federal elections. Yes, some states do allow citizens to automatically register to vote when they get a driver’s license, but the process for migrants to get a license is different, sometimes taking years, according to VERIFY, a fact-checking outlet. Migrants seeking a driver’s license have to provide a foreign birth certificate, foreign passport, or a consular card and are not registered to vote, even in states where this is automatic for citizens.
This has always been the case. For example, Massachusetts is one of the states that automatically registers voters. However, as the Associated Press reported in 2022:
The law passed by Massachusetts state lawmakers this summer prohibits immigrants without legal permission to reside in the U.S. from being automatically registered to vote. The law specifically mandates that the state Registrar of Motor Vehicles develop procedures and regulations to ensure that license applicants who are not citizens are not automatically registered to vote.
In his tweet, Musk also claims that votes cast by undocumented migrants are collected by “ballot harvesters”—a claim straight out of the “2000 Mules” school of voter fraud conspiracy theory. However, this is also a lie. As Reuters reports, there is no evidence of widespread “ballot harvesting” or anything similar. However, ballot collection—in which one person drops off ballots for a number of others—is critical to making voting possible in some areas, such as Native American tribal lands. Which is exactly why Republicans want to make the practice illegal.
It’s good to see that Musk is getting a lot of use out of his $44 billion purchase. On the other hand, with a 30-second spot on the Super Bowl running about $7 million, Musk might have gotten his MAGA talking points out a lot more cheaply by just buying up some time.
In fact, what Musk spent on Twitter would be enough to buy every ad slot on every Super Bowl for the next 63 years. Think of all the acting work that could have been generated for superstars like Kid Rock and Chachi.
There’s no reason that still can’t happen. Musk can always blow through another few billion. And it’s not like he doesn’t have time to handle this.
Mark Sumner
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