The billionaire businessman Elon Musk has been Donald Trump’s closest ally throughout his 2024 campaign, and now an organization primarily funded by the CEO of Tesla, X, Starlink, and SpaceX is managing the former president’s ground operations in the seven battleground states likely to determine who will occupy the White House in January.
Trump’s “wider ground game operation in crucial battleground states is now largely outsourced to America Pac, the political action committee backed by” Musk, The Guardian reported, citing multiple sources.
The Trump campaign initially anticipated having multiple PACs engaged in get-out-the-vote efforts. However, with just six weeks until the election, only America PAC has a significant presence, employing 300 to 400 paid and part-time individuals to knock on doors in each of the seven battleground states, according to sources who spoke with the outlet.
America PAC is also the only organization—whether affiliated with the Trump campaign or not—that aims to conduct three “passes” of homes belonging to likely Trump voters in every battleground state before Election Day.
After omitting Georgia from its initial list, Turning Point Action, run by Charlie Kirk and backed by the Trump campaign, now operates in Arizona, Wisconsin, and two specific districts in Michigan and Nevada.
As a result, America PAC now represents a significant portion of the essential but often overlooked work of door-knocking and canvassing Trump voters in battleground states to encourage them to return their ballots, The Guardian reported.
The effort to bring on the Musk-backed PAC hasn’t been without problems, however. Last week, America Pac fired the company it had retained in Arizona and Nevada to do door-knocking and canvassing.
The decision to terminate the September Group had detrimental effects for Trump, as America PAC lost several days of canvassing while searching for a replacement company and also lost some of the approximately 300 individuals they had hired in each state.
The Trump campaign denied having a reliance on America PAC, stating that it had more than 27,000 volunteers working as Trump 47 Captains, a program allows dedicated Trump supporters to receive exclusive MAGA merchandise as they help increase voter registrations.
“Team Trump has hundreds of staff and offices mobilizing hundreds of thousands of volunteers across the country. That’s why everyone wants to take credit for our groundbreaking, data-enhanced, people-powered operation,” Karoline Leavitt, a Trump spokesperson, said in a statement.
The America PAC ground game operation was slow to start after abandoning its initial plans, only ramping up its hiring efforts last month.
However, it has since grown significantly, the outlet reported. By partnering with canvassing vendors in each battleground state, America PAC’s operation now includes hundreds of paid and part-time employees engaging in an unusually aggressive get-out-the-vote effort, according to sources who spoke to The Guardian.
Trump stunned fans at a Michigan rally with an announcement about Musk on Friday, essentially confirming that he intends to bring the CEO into his administration if he is successful in the election, as the national “cost cutter.”
“I’m going to get Elon, and he’s great at this; he’s going to be our cost-cutter. I think he can save trillions,” he told a rally audience.
“I don’t think I can get him full-time because he’s a little bit busy sending rockets up and all the things he does,” he said. “But he’s so much into that. He said the waste in this country is crazy.”
“We’re going to get Elon Musk to be our cost-cutter. He’s going to do it for zero. He doesn’t want anything,” the former president said.
“It’s going to be incredible, what he’ll be able to do, without hurting anybody — just waste. It’s waste, fraud and abuse … you get rid of that; everybody lives much better, we have a country that’s really strong again,” he said.
