During the public and nasty breakup between billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, Musk made a shocking claim—in addition to the claim that Trump is mentioned in the sealed FBI files on Jeffrey Epstein—that Trump would not be president if it weren’t for his money.
Referring to last year’s presidential election, Musk wrote on X, “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House, and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”
By public admission, Musk confirmed what many Democrats have long said about the outsized role of Musk’s nearly $300 million in 2024 campaign donations to Trump, whose upset victory against Democratic nominee, former Vice President Kamala Harris, still has the Democratic Party in a state of rehabilitation.
“It’s incredible that he’s saying the truth out loud that billionaires buy elections. It’s amazing to see a billionaire say that they get to define the future and to say it so plainly,” said Yemisi Egbewole, former chief of staff for the White House Press Secretary’s Office.
The former Biden-Harris official told theGrio that, despite Republicans asserting that Trump won the 2024 election because he better understood voters, Musk’s admission proves he actually won “because the richest man in the world said, ‘I want this man to be president.’”
Political analyst Reecie Colbert said she believes Elon Musk’s comments warrant a probe from Democrats.
“Since we’re in the era of Trump investigating political adversaries, I say, let’s get these Democratic attorneys general on the line in these swing states and do an investigation into the 2024 election,” Colbert told theGrio. She asked, “Did Elon Musk unduly influence the election?”
Any investigation would have to be at the state level. President Trump has a tight grip on the federal government, including an executive branch that has been transformed in his political image. “Clearly, Kash Patel is not going to do it,” said Colbert, referring to the FBI director, a Trump loyalist who has floated false claims and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
Reflecting on the 2024 presidential election, Democratic strategist Joel Payne told theGrio, “I think back to Kamala Harris warning at several points during last year’s campaign, including at the [Democratic National Convention], where she said Donald Trump is an unserious man and the consequences of him being elected are very serious.”
Payne asserted, “We are existing within a prime exhibit of what she was talking about.”
Egbewole said Kamala Harris as President would never have “let a billionaire dictate the national narrative,” explaining, “She would be too busy passing legislation to move this country forward.”
The former White House staffer said Harris would be focused on creating a new pathway to jobs, expanding health care, and investing in the fight against climate change.
“If she were president, the conversation wouldn’t be two egomaniacs trading barbs back and forth. She would not be in Twitter fights,” Egbewole said. “She would be delivering wins. She’d be focused on working families, Black and brown communities. She would be delivering on exactly what she ran for.”
Since Trump took office, millions of Americans have protested in the streets, outside of federal buildings, and inside the offices of elected officials in opposition of several executive actions from the president and his “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which would cut more than $1 trillion in Medicaid, SNAP and education.
“People kind of got used to the investments that were made into allowing millions of people to gain access to health care, allowing families to have some breathing room,” said Colbert, who is the host of “The Reecie Colbert Show” on Sirius XM. “I think they just took it for granted and they really underestimated the massive shock to not just the government, but the economy that Trump would usher in.”
If Harris were president, she said the country would be “humming along,” adding, “We probably would have passed a reconciliation bill that extended the Child Tax Credit and moved the needle on the minimum wage.”
She continued, “We would have moved the needle on investments in housing affordability, and we would have continued to see the emphasis that the last administration placed on shoring up health care.”
While delivering remarks at the State of the People Tour in Los Angeles, Harris said Trump’s government takeover is “decades in the making,” referring to the conservative policy document, Project 2025, which she and Democrats frantically warned voters about during the 2024 election.
“What else has been in the making for a very long time [is] what we know how to do in terms of organizing, what we know how to do in terms of mobilizing, what we know how to do in terms of connecting people together to own our power,” said Harris, who is considering a run for California governor or another bid for president in 2028.
In a room filled with Black elected officials, organizers, activists, and community members, the former vice president said that Trump’s vision for America is “narrow” and “self-serving.”
“We also have a vision for America,” said Harris. “A vision of America that understands…the power of the people to dictate their own future and not be told what they must accept.” She added, “We wait to be given nothing. We take what we need, and we do it by understanding how we organize, how we reach out, how we build community [and] how we build coalition.”
