Washington Examiner Senior Columnist Salena Zito argued billionaire Elon Musk’s support for former President Donald Trump is a key asset to the Trump campaign, largely due to Musk’s work ethic.
Musk joined the former president at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, during which he spoke to the attendees about the need to support Trump in November. Zito contended that the support Musk offers to Trump is “really big,” citing how both of them share a similar level of appeal with their fans.
“These are men that people, men and women, look at and see they do things, they accomplish things,” Zito said on Fox News’s Fox Report with Jon Scott. “Think about how Trump remade, I think it was the ice rink in New York City, right? He brought that back to life. He built things. He made things better. The same can be said for Elon Musk. People on one level think, ‘He’s rich, he’s eccentric.’ Well, people in the middle of the country’s like, ‘He goes to the next frontier, the Wild West. He goes to space. He does humanitarian work with Starlink in North Carolina.’ He makes things. He doesn’t tell you you have to buy an EV but uses the innovation to make new things. And that’s sort of the ethos of the American working man.”
Musk endorsed Trump’s 2024 presidential run in the hours after the first assassination attempt on Trump, which also took place at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. During his visit to Trump’s Butler rally on Saturday, Musk told the Washington Examiner that Trump represents “the actual path to a democratic future” and contended that those deeming Trump a threat to the nation’s democracy are actually the threat to democracy.
When comparing Trump’s rallies to Vice President Kamala Harris’s rallies, Zito noted that Harris’s events are “invite-only,” making it hard for her to gauge her voter enthusiasm. She noted that Harris is hosting an event with former President Barack Obama this Thursday, saying she was “very interested” in seeing how big a draw he would be for Pennsylvania in 2024, a state she argued has become more conservative since the 2010s.
While talking about how the 2024 race is incredibly close in Pennsylvania, Zito suggested that the former president has a slight advantage due to how Harris is struggling to connect with working-class voters. Pennsylvania is coveted within the Electoral College, with Trump and Harris frequently visiting it on the 2024 campaign trail.
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In a bid to help Trump in the 2024 election, Musk’s America PAC is offering $47 for every referral that results in signing a petition saying they will support free speech and the Second Amendment. Only voters in swing states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina — are eligible for the payments, and they must refer people by Oct. 21.
A recent poll surveying 1,000 likely voters found that Trump and Harris are virtually tied in Pennsylvania, with both garnering 48% support against a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.